Crossing a Rubicon - Invitation to the future?

HAD Brian Lenihan Senior, the father of our Finance Minister, been invited to speak at the annual Béal na mBláth commemoration in west Cork it is unlikely that he could have accepted the honour even if he had wanted to.

Brian Lenihan Snr was of a generation – he was born in 1930 – that followed the divisions of the Civil War because they had little option but to acknowledge the great tribal divide that had, and still does to a certain degree, stymied this country’s political development. He would not have been comfortable at the prospect of offending some of his senior colleagues by honouring someone once seen as an opponent.

It may be over-egging the pudding to imagine that by accepting such an invitation today’s Brian Lenihan might cross a significant Rubicon but it is certainly an indication of a new and more comfortable relationship between the two main factions in Irish politics.

And about time too. Indeed the often barely perceptible difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael can be a source of frustration for many people who care about this country but do not involve themselves in politics.

After nearly a century of division it is reassuring to see that rapprochement is possible. Is it too much to hope that this might be the catalyst for far greater cooperation between two parties with far more in common than they might care to admit?