Let’s demolish the oldest of all our myths

THE Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, is to be greatly commended for his unceasing efforts to promote peace and reconciliation here in this State (no better man for that role could be imagined), between South and North and between Ireland and Britain.

If we are on the verge of an historic compromise in Belfast, can we at long last begin to dispense with myths that are to the disadvantage of us all?

On the threshold of a new-found peace, the Taoiseach referred to the 800 years of the ancient antagonism. I wish to say once again there was no such antagonism, not at least between the English and the Irish, and not for 800 years.