The Taoiseach has had his standing ovation from the Dail. Other political leaders from Mr Tony Blair to Mr Gerry Adams to Mr David Trimble have basked in their achievement of the Good Friday Agreement. But the hard and bitter questions - on prisoners, on policing, on the memory of the dead, on the pain of the bereaved - have begun to emerge even before the warm glow of congratulation has begun to abate.
Yesterday the Labour Party leader Mr Ruairi Quinn posed a searching question. If the community in Northern Ireland is to be asked to watch the murderers of RUC officers walking free from prison, can public opinion in this jurisdiction insist on different treatment for those who have murdered members of the Garda Siochana? For all that Government Ministers have said that this cannot be, Mr Quinn's question is searing and inescapable. Can one community be expected to free those who have killed their policemen while the Republic insists that those who have killed gardai serve out their sentences?
Yesterday too, the Chief Constable of the RUC, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, took the opportunity of a Daily Telegraph interview to warn against the dangers of change being imposed upon the force for political purposes. The RUC has lost almost 300 members during the Troubles, he pointed out. And it has been the "bulwark between anarchy and disorder". Even to change the force's name could be catastrophic, he implied. The Daily Telegraph supported the Chief Constable's argument with a poignant two-page spread of photographs of the force's dead and an editorial warning against the participation of "foreigners" in the proposed commission on policing. In the same edition the widow of a murdered constable explains why she cannot vote for an agreement which will free her husband's killers.
No issues stir such elemental instincts as these. Many people in both parts of Ireland will be less troubled by constitutional aspects of the Agreement than by potential injustices, as they see them, to those who have been killed or wounded, or to those - whether RUC or Garda - who have stood in defence of their communities. Yet, even among those in this jurisdiction who honour the reputation and standing of the Garda Siochana, there is often little understanding of the fierce pride and protectiveness with which the RUC is viewed and the sense of dependency upon it among the community from which it is drawn.
Demands from Sinn Fein that the RUC be disbanded are by no means universally reflective of nationalist thinking. There is much room for improving local accountability between police and people. The force will have to change to reflect the differing communities which it serves in the "fundamentally different" circumstances of the Agreement, as described yesterday by the SDLP's Mr Alex Attwood. Yet it is well recognised that if the force is now overwhelmingly Protestant in its composition, this in considerable measure, is due to the fact that Sinn Fein's IRA counterparts targeted for murder any Catholic who was foolish or brave enough to join over the years. For a great many nationalists, much of what is wrong with the RUC is in its symbolism and its perceived unionist/ Protestant ethos rather than in its operational performance. To bring the force out of that perception into a position of acceptance and trust across the entire community of Northern Ireland, will require leadership and skill. The Chief Constable cautions against the dropping of the prefix "Royal" in its title. "It makes us proud", he told the Daily Telegraph. Yet for a substantial minority of the population that very word is divisive and a reminder that the force was founded to protect the political privileges of one community against another. If the RUC is to fit into the landscape of a peaceful Northern Ireland, the very least it will have to do is accept that its symbols must be reflective of both communities' ideals, ambitions and political culture rather than just those of the majority.