Royal visit - New chapter for our relations

AT precisely 12.47 yesterday afternoon, the course of Anglo-Irish relations changed forever when Queen Elizabeth II signed the visitor’s book at Áras an Uachtaráin.

It was a deeply psychological and symbolic moment, an acknowledgment by the British head of state that she was in Ireland as a visitor, a guest of the Irish head of state, President Mary McAleese.

The true significance of the event sank home as the strains of God Save the Queen and Amhrán na bhFiann rang out across the broad acres of the Phoenix Park, climaxing in a 21-gun salute, a volley of shots fired not in anger but in friendship and welcome. There was no bowing and scraping. Neither was there any sense of superiority or of subservience. It was a meeting of equals, a coming together of the representatives of two neighbouring nations in mutual respect, a moment of which the people of Ireland can rightly be proud.