THE Irish election barely permeated the Northern Ireland consciousness until the RTE debate last week between John Bruton and Bertie Ahern. Unfortunately, both leaders avoided the critical questions on Northern Ireland policy and instead concentrated on matters of style.

Contrary to Bruton's stated wish to cherish all the people in Ireland equally, including the unionists, any Taoiseach has a bounden duty to be a cheerleader for the nationalist minority, as Ahern states, under the terms of the Anglo Irish Agreement.

John Bruton's sincerity with regard to Northern Ireland is obvious and while some say that history will judge unionism harshly for failing to seize the opportunity which his period in office presented, this is quite wrong.

It overlooks several key factors, notably that he inherited a peace process and a framework document not of his own design, not to mention the absence for over a year of an IRA ceasefire.

He also had to coalesce with a Tanaiste who has quite contrary instincts to his and those of the Democratic Left leader. Despite repeated indications that the Taoiseach's Department was on the verge of seizing the Northern Ireland brief back from Iveagh House, this never happened.

It is to be hoped that the new government will bring greater clarity.

John Bruton claimed on television last week that the people of the Shankill are as Irish as those on the Falls. This would appear to be at variance with his previously stated position that there was no point telling the people of the Shankill that they are Irish.

WHETHER or not people on the Shankill consider themselves to be Irish or not is of practically no relevance, however. This debate only serves to obscure the fact that they regard their British citizenship and Northern Ireland's position within the Union as nonnegotiable so long as there is a majority in favour of that outcome, and that they are insufficiently reassured that the present process is not an attempt to wrestle them out of the Union by stealth.

Despite his trenchant criticism of the Bruton approach, Bertie Ahern knows that to set his face against the pluralist vision of Ireland that Bruton espoused, however clumsily, would be counterproductive.

We might see the end of invitations to the leaders of unionism to attend 1916 commemorations, which produce only mirth, but with Martin Mansergh effectively directing Northern Ireland policy behind the scenes there should be no departure from the Downing Street Declaration which, it should be remembered, spoke of a "permanent end" to the use of and support fur, violence.

There can be no shades of grey when it comes to human life. To deny that the Ireland of the future will owe more to the Bruton/De Rossa vision than that of O Caolain, Blaney et al would be a dangerous illusion, as Charles Haughey understood on returning to office in 1987.

Fianna Fail's historic duty is to play the green card just enough to squeeze Sinn Fein out of the body politic while at the same time not being so serious about Irish unity as to upset the dynamics of the southern State and actually make a genuine offer to the unionists which would remove all the disagreeable aspects of that state.

Garret FitzGerald made a first start. But any serious student knows that "Protestantising" the southern State is not the object of unionism.

However, while unionists will not be dissuaded from their allegiance by a serious attack on the southern Constitution and arbitrary patronage, it would be a mistake to under estimate the positive effect the Republic's emergent pluralism has on unionist attitudes and willingness to deal constructively with the Republic on a wide range of measures to the mutual benefit of North and South.

Aggressive posturing to woo the curious on the Independent benched will only put further strain on unionist toleration.

AS IT is, there can be no denying the improvement in NorthSouth relations, which has seen unionists engaging with Dublin in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

Meetings between the unionist leadership and southern political leaders are no longer unheard of, and Bertie Ahern will at least have the benefit of having met David Trimble and John Taylor on both sides of the Border and learnt, as Sean Lemass did, that a certain type of language, or rather the ditching of certain other language, is required if trust is to be built up.

At the same time, unionists would do well to remember that Bertie Ahern has stated publicly to the Irish Association that "irredentism is dead", and that it was only Sinn Fein and the Greens, and not Fianna Fail, who were unable to sign up to consent at the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.

Extreme southern nationalists should not be completely taken in by reports of unionist horror at the prospect of Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach.

Fianna Fail has much more scope to deal with Northern Ireland the Rainbow had. There could be little hope of substantive movement in relation to security or the Irish Constitution unless it had the support of Fianna Fail, regardless of John Bruton's personal inclinations.

It might be that there will evolve a coalition of views in the talks between Bertie Ahern and David Trimble, who has been buoyed by Tony Blair's refreshing views. Ahern's statement that he was not prepared to play the part of Gerry Adams's nursemaid for ever, and that he would give Sinn Fein/IRA one last chance to call a completed and permanent ceasefire within a specified period before reluctantly commencing substantive talks without them, accords well with the UUP leader's latest offer to "pigeon hole" decommissioning in the event of Sinn Fein indefinitely excluding itself from negotiations.

IF SUCH substantive talks were to commence without the republican movement, a strict security regime would be a prerequisite. The suspicion is that the new Irish government is electorally obliged to accept the bona fides of any IRA ceasefire, however cynical, of course.

The brooding presence of Albert Reynolds, who since leaving office appears to have forgotten many of the commitments his government gave in office on the necessity of decommissioning and personally ruling out joint authority, is an unwelcome complication.

But a new opportunity does exist now that the party in the Republic which can actually deliver has been returned and David Trimble's leadership of unionism has been con firmed. Useful progress might be squandered, though, if no stability can be achieved pending another Irish election.