Like Sleeping Beauty emerging from a long slumber, the Irish College in Paris reopened yesterday after a year- and-a-half of renovations during which the 18th-century building changed into the Centre Culturel Irlandais.
The man intended to play the role of Prince Charming - the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern - could not travel to Paris on the final day of the referendum campaign. So he left it to the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, to awaken the somnolent beauty.
After opening his speech ás Gaeilge, Mr O'Donoghue said he was "confident that the Irish language will continue to be heard in these halls ... and that the language will remain an essential key to our heritage, not only at home but as part of the heritage of the continent".
He then delighted the 400 guests gathered inside a plastic tent by speaking French with a Kerry accent. Nor did the Minister forget his sports portfolio; his joke that the Good Friday agreement stipulated that Armagh beat Kerry drew applause.
It was a day for paying homage to those without whose dedication the Centre Culturel would not have happened. Mr O'Donoghue thanked the past chairmen of the Committee of Friends of the Irish College, Dr Frank O'Reilly, who was too ill to make the journey, and Prof Pronsias MacCana, the Celtic scholar.
Mgr Brendan Devlin, the rector who 39 years ago began planning to restore the college to Irish control, received ample praise. So did Mr William Glynn, now the chairman of the centre's management board, and Ambassador Patrick O'Connor, now posted to Lisbon; both men encouraged Dublin to fund the €10.5 million project at the end of the 1990s.
Mrs Bríd O'Sullivan, the widow of the late ambassador Tadhg O'Sullivan, said she was "a bit sad and a bit glad" to be present. More than a decade ago, Mr O'Sullivan reformed the statutes of the Fondation Irlandaise, to put Ireland on equal footing with France in the running of the college. "People came up and said that if it wasn't for Tadhg, we wouldn't have it," Mrs O'Sullivan said.
"More than anything else, this is like closing a circuit," Mgr Devlin said. "This is the actual, physical embodiment of an essential element of our national identity. It was the only institution that ensured a steady supply of educated people to Ireland during the Penal Laws between 1534 and 1829. I see it as a reassertion of Irish identity." Perhaps it was confusion over penal laws that prompted the French government to send their junior minister for building prisons. Or maybe the French assumed that coming from the Justice Ministry, Monsieur Pierre Bédier would get along with Mr O'Donoghue, a former minister for justice.
The Frenchman made a rousing call for a long life to Franco-Irish friendship. The absence of heads of state or government didn't really matter. Even the weather conspired to make the party successful, withholding a hail storm until most of the guests had departed.
A bright, new tricolour hung over the great coach door in the Rue des Irlandais, and Mr David Slattery, one of the architects who oversaw the the Office of Public Works renovation, laughed with pleasure when bells rang in the belfry he'd restored.
Wrapped in an emerald green scarf, the centre's new director, Ms Helen Carey, wondered out loud "whether it's the longest day or whether it will seem short when it's over".
College staff and10 burly security men-in-black scurried about with secret service-style ear-pieces. It didn't matter that the liveried waiters reserved most of the food until after the speeches, by which time guests had been standing for two hours.
The mood in the tent, filled with giant sprays of flowers, was friendly and festive. The cream-coloured walls and blue-grey roof rising above the courtyard were like an old friend rediscovered, more beautiful than remembered.
Mr Glynn, the chairman, best captured the impression that the college itself was the strongest presence.
"The spirits of the Irish who passed through these portals over hundreds of years are happy and smiling today," he said.
"Today we stand in the line of history, confident of the future, confident of our ability to drive cultural exchange between France and Ireland."
