As I have stated here before, I believe that the people of Ireland and Britain owe Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair an enormous debt of gratitude for helping bring peace and political stability to Northern Ireland, writes David Adams.
However, contrary to a broad strand of popular opinion, I do not think that Blair's achievements in Ireland qualify him in any way for his new role as a peace envoy to the Middle East. There are many reasons for this.
As then prime minister of the United Kingdom, Mr Blair was a major player in the Irish peace process with power to implement and drive change. In the Middle East, he will be a largely impotent outsider reliant solely on his powers of persuasion. Nor will he be dealing with a mere handful of influential actors.
It will be the representatives of many states and factions, all with their own often diametrically opposed agendas, that he will be attempting to coax and cajole. To say the situation in the region is infinitely more complex than was the case in Northern Ireland is to put it at its mildest. While there isn't any clear definition of what actually constitutes the Middle East, it is always worth bearing in mind that its boundaries and problems extend far beyond Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the current bloodbath that is Iraq.
It can be said to consist of about at least 20 separate nations. Almost without exception, each has a history of internal unrest and conflict with neighbours over borders and/or religious, ethnic and tribal differences.
Resentments simmer and ancient animosities fester both within and between countries.
In most states, internal stability comes only through the rigid repression of citizens.
Each of the main players has at one time or another used the Palestinians and their cause for their own ends, and then discarded them.
In their jockeying for regional power, the larger nations often foment discord and fight proxy wars within neighbouring countries as have, most recently, the likes of Syria and Iran in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon.
In short, the entire region is a tinderbox.
Perhaps Tony Blair will confine himself to trying to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Yet even there, it would be hard to argue that his experience in Northern Ireland will be of any benefit. Difficult as it was to bring our own conflict to a successful conclusion, it has to be acknowledged that it had long since lost impetus by the time he came to it.
For years before the first ceasefire of 1994, the IRA campaign had trundled bloodily and depressingly along, driven more by force of habit than any remaining expectation of original goals being realised. The republican leadership was anxious to end it, but were faced with the difficulty of how, exactly, to do that.
Sustained intervention by the two governments and a series of political initiatives provided an alternative to the self-perpetuating cycle of violence.
When Blair and Ahern came to office, all of this initial spadework had already been done by John Major and Albert Reynolds.
By then, ceasefires and the outline of a political settlement were in place.
For the then two new premiers it was a matter of steering the Irish peace process to a largely agreed destination.
This is not to underplay what they eventually achieved, but merely to point up how it contrasts with the current Israeli/Palestinian situation.
With the best will in the world, no one could claim that the conflict there has shown any signs of losing its momentum. If anything, it has been re-energised in recent years.
There seems, also, to be an unspoken belief - perhaps held by Mr Blair himself - that if the Israeli/Palestinian conflict were to be sorted out then, essentially, the problems of the Middle East itself would be all but resolved.
This is wishful thinking in the extreme.
It is, in my view, impossible to detach the Israeli/Palestinian conflict from the problems that beset the rest of the Middle East.
However, it does not necessarily follow that its resolution will bring peace to the entire region. In fact, the very opposite might well be the case. A deep antipathy to Israel is often the only point of agreement between many Middle Eastern states. It is what deflects them somewhat from pursuing at full throttle the myriad disputes that separate them.
Even if the state of Israel were to cease to exist, there would still not be peace and stability in the Middle East.
There wouldn't even be peace in Palestine.
For alongside all of the ancient antagonisms, border disputes, ethnic enmities and the inter- and intra-religious feuding, there is also a region-wide battle for supremacy between fundamentalist Islamism and relatively moderate strands of that religion.
It is a battle the fundamentalists are winning.
It is into this cauldron that Mr Blair will step, armed only with his experience of peacemaking in Northern Ireland.
It will count as nothing.
Need we even begin to consider how his adventures in Iraq will count against him?