Failure just another step towards success

The Stormont talks led by those very patient Americans, Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan, aimed at consolidating progress made in the North in recent years, may not have ended in an entirely positive way but it is not unreasonable to hope that even this inconclusive episode represents an advance of sorts, especially in a society still so unable to be at ease with itself.

It is not as if the whole process has finally concluded just because this particular attempt to build a society embracing two often bitterly divided communities did not work out as the great majority of people on these islands would have wished — that is if they consider the issues at all.

Outstanding, sometime incendiary issues around identity and the past, divisive symbolism or celebrations will have to be discussed again and finally resolved before the North’s population, and by extension everyone on these islands, can focus on resolving all of the other great challenges the world so readily presents.