Could we bridge the great divide?

A PIER is a disappointed bridge, James Joyce once wrote. We’ve seen a lot of disappointed bridges in the past 10 years since the Good Friday Agreement was hailed as having signed, sealed and delivered a future for the North.

Driving on the literary rut for another couple of seconds, we come to Cré na Cille, the majestic novel written by the great Connemara writer Máirtín Ó Cadhain. All of its main characters are dead and are buried in the local graveyard beside the sea. All have carried the petty jealousies, snobberies, prejudices, gossip and tittle-tattle of their lives to the grave, where the sniping continues.

As the results trickled in yesterday, we got the accompanying soul-sapping flood of negativity and bickering. Paisley’s bellicose remarks about republicanism, democracy and evil set the tone. Soon, doubts were being expressed about the March 26 deadline. The media honed in on other problems. How could Sinn Féin say it was committed to policing and then parlay its way out of its own MP Michelle Gildernew’s comments to the effect that she would refuse to contact the PSNI about suspicious dissident republican activity?