Bidding a final, grim farewell to romantic Ireland

Mary Harney quoted Shakespeare. Ruairi Quinn quoted Maya Angelou. Nobody quoted Yeats, but if the author of September 1913 had been in the Dail in September 1998, he would have been even more certain that romantic Ireland was dead and gone.

In his opening speech, the Taoiseach reminded us that it was "a little over two weeks since the Omagh atrocity, since a street carnival was turned into a massacre, a ghastly relapse that joins and even surpasses the very worst tragedies of the last 30 years".

He reminded us also that this was the year in which we were commemorating 1798 and "the true, non-sectarian, humane founding vision of the United Irishmen". The Good Friday Agreement was a return to these principles, he suggested. But if this was a time for optimism about new beginnings, it was well masked yesterday under a grim determination to break the back of violent republicanism for good.

Acknowledging the recent INLA ceasefire, Mr Ahern demanded "that all remaining groups follow suit or face the consequences". And of the draconian legislation his Government was shortly to introduce, he warned: "These people are about to learn a lesson that will teach them to respect the strength of Irish democracy."

Grim as the Taoiseach was, however, he wasn't as grim as Fine Gael's Brendan McGahon. Whatever Sinn Fein and the IRA choose to do, there is no prospect of a McGahon ceasefire in the near future, and no one was safe from his wrath yesterday.

Not militant republicanism, which like Dracula needed a "stake driven though its heart". Not the State, which had "stood idly by, doing Sweet Fanny Adams" while people died. And certainly not Sinn Fein, ceasefire or no. "Guilty by association in the deaths of hundreds," said Mr McGahon, the SF leadership were "these bastards who have brought this country to its knees" and were now "posing as international statesmen because they have been sung a song by the British government, who sing a different song to everybody".

The British government's unsinging representative, ambassador Veronica Sutherland, was in the distinguished visitors' gallery for the speeches by party leaders, which, unlike Mr McGahon's later effort, were high on solemnity but low on passion. It wasn't until the turn of Democratic Left that any of them ran over time. Ironically, Proinsias De Rossa was in the act of demanding a war-is-over statement from the whole republican movement when the Ceann Comhairle intervened to demand of him an assurance that his speech would be over soon. Mr De Rossa was unable to give such an assurance, but he was allowed to proceed anyway.

At 11.40 a.m., the chamber stood for a minute's silence for the victims of Omagh. Once this was over, it took only another minute or so for the Opposition benches to empty, the soft-shoe shuffle drowning out the opening words of the Minister for Justice as he introduced legislation which he said gave him "no pleasure".

In her opening speech, Mary Harney had compared the "Real IRA" to Macbeth: "in blood stepped in so far . . ." Shortly beforehand, like Banquo's ghost, Des O'Malley had slipped into the chamber, a haunting reminder of the 1972 precursor to the present legislation, which he introduced as the then minister for justice. Without a Macbeth to haunt, Mr O'Malley seemed at a loss as to which of the many seats to choose from, but finally picked the most distant corner of the Government benches, thereby placing himself directly across the aisle from the sole Sinn Fein deputy.

Unfazed, Caomhghin O Caolain spoke against the legislation, and when a vote was challenged at 5.30 p.m. he was joined on his feet by Independents Tony Gregory and Joe Higgins, both of whom had compared the Omagh bomb with the US attack on Khartoum. But the grim mood saw the legislation through the second stage without a vote.

Mr Ahern was not the only one to invoke the romantic vision of 1798 yesterday. Brendan Howlin also spoke fondly of the "noble political philosophy" of the United Irishmen.

But if Yeats had been around he might have said: "Let them be, they're dead and gone". Like more than 30 others who died in Omagh and Ballymoney this summer, they're with O'Leary in the grave.