In a moment of millennial magic, President predicts second golden age

The President wore red for her address to the joint Houses, a seasonal choice mirrored around the chamber, where Mary O'Rourke and half a dozen others looked like berries in a holly tree.

As for the holly, well, Leinster House can be a prickly place at times. But it was all peace and goodwill yesterday as TDs and senators prepared to rise for the Christmas recess, no doubt reflecting on the historic and deeply moving fact that their seats were now safe for the rest of the century.

Historic has been an over-used word this year, and the Ceann Comhairle, Seamus Pattison, resorted to it again when introducing his special guest. It was hard to disagree, though, when the President spoke of "this millennial moment" as a time of profound change in Ireland, with unprecedented economic and cultural successes now crowned by peace.

Recalling Ireland's first "golden age" - the early centuries of Christianisation - she dared to predict a second, while admitting we still had a way to go "before our star stops over an Ireland where the shadows have lifted for all". Sitting in the shadows behind the Opposition benches, special guest Gerry Adams probably agreed.

The 1990s has been a golden age for Irish poets, or it would have been if they'd been paid royalties every time they were quoted in a presidential speech.

Brendan Kennelly, Micheal O Siadhail, Seamus Heaney and John Hewitt all featured yesterday, the President typically giving representation to the two main traditions (Kerry people and others). But one of the former, Senator Joe O'Toole, was moved to point afterwards to the uniqueness of an Oireachtas address not including a quotation from Yeats.

Apart from Mr Adams, other guests in the chamber included the President's immediate predecessors, Mary Robinson and Paddy Hillery; and alongside them, although he failed in two attempts to achieve that status, Tom O'Higgins.

In the distinguished visitors' gallery, meanwhile, an eclectic mix of people included writer and former Beirut hostage, Brian Keenan, GAA president Joe McDonagh, psychiatrist Anthony Clare and influential Belfast priest, Father Alex Reid.

Whatever about the golden age, this is certainly the age of the mobile phone. And almost inevitably with so many regular users gathered, there was a ring in the middle of the President's speech, causing discomfort in the press gallery (where such a crime would mean death by firing squad) and among a number of deputies and senators.

Ruairi Quinn was among those who patted their pockets nervously. And there was relief when the real culprit, Senator Frank Chambers, switched his unit off.