This afternoon's special congress of the Gaelic Athletic Association will have a resonance far beyond Ireland's largest sporting organisation. The move to delete Rule 21, which prohibits members of the Northern security forces from joining the association, is overdue and will never again be so timely.
Mr Joe McDonagh, president of the GAA, has acted courageously in bringing into the open an issue which has frequently been brushed out of sight. By acting on the association's oracular policy of holding a special congress on the issue when "circumstances warrant it", he has forced the GAA to face up to a troublesome piece of history.
Sadly, the opposition to reform - centred as it is within Northern Ireland - shows the extent to which the GAA in Northern Ireland has become out of touch with its own community. Fifty seven per cent of nationalists, surveyed in last week's Sunday Times exit poll, supported repeal; 25 per cent opposed it. It is fair to wonder at this stage if the time for repeal will ever be right in the eyes of those opponents.
Acceptance of the Belfast Agreement includes acceptance of the Commission on policing for Northern Ireland. The fact that this commission won't publish a report until next year didn't inhibit acceptance of the principle. Only elements within the GAA, it seems, are unwilling to act in keeping with the spirit of that principle.
There will be many delegates at this afternoon's congress who have been outraged by some of the wrongs suffered by the GAA at the hands of Northern security forces. But central to the argument for abolition - as it was to the overwhelming support for last week's referendums - is the belief that past wrongs must be set aside. Rule 21 serves no useful purpose in addressing grievances and perpetuates the tensions that so many people on this island are hoping to defuse.
Mr McDonagh's courage in bringing the issue forward is all the more pronounced as the GAA has much to lose by rejection. He will have a significant backing but whether or not he will have the required two-thirds majority hangs in the balance. In the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement, Mr McDonagh knew that time was running out for the GAA if it wanted removal of the ban to be a meaningful contribution to a time of hope, rather than an irrelevant postscript. His words ring even more true one week after the referendums which overwhelmingly endorsed that agreement.
"I say to you that we cannot, as the largest organisation in this country, shirk our responsibility or role in achieving and contributing to peace. The poet John Donne stated that `no man is an island'. Certainly an organisation as broadly based and as community based as ours is not an island."
For those in favour of retaining the ban the issue is an emotive one which goes to the heart of all that has happened over the past 30 years. They see the rule as a provision which defiantly reproaches the security forces of a state hostile to Irish culture. By so doing, they miss the point that Rule 21 is as much part of the sectarian landscape as a protest against it.