The end of one millennium and the start of another is merely an arbitrary calendar moment, a milestone among the segments into which we humans divide time for our own convenience.
Yet the President, Mrs McAleese, sought to show yesterday that this arbitrary moment does, in fact, coincide with a period of enormous potential for change in Ireland. She suggested that Ireland could truly be ending one era and entering another.
Above all, she told the massed national politicians of the State in the crowded Dail chamber that they now had choices to make, and that those choices "will give our future its shape, its depth".
Mrs McAleese's address marked the opening of an unusual day in the Oireachtas, one in which routine political controversies were put aside and political leaders spoke philosophically of the future.
John Bruton, Ruairi Quinn and Trevor Sargent all questioned the headlong rush for economic growth, and wondered where it was leading. The Taoiseach spoke of the need for a caring society, not just a prosperous one. All referred to the need to rebuild faith in the political process after recent revelations of what the Taoiseach called "instances of untoward aberrations in the high standards of public conduct that we wish to see upheld".
Mrs McAleese's address was simple but eloquent, reminding the audience of the painful history that had preceded Ireland's economic success, and emphasising the possibilities offered by prosperity and the rejuvenation of politics in Northern Ireland. She invited the Ministers, TDs, senators and dignitaries to dream of the future, to look beyond daily political controversies, to imagine what Irish society could be like and then work to bring it about. "We get to write a chapter of our country's history," she said.
She painted a picture of an Ireland "rich in imagination, rooted in community", free of conflict, sharing its resources at home and abroad. There were decisions to be made that could bring this about and that would result in historians looking back at the approaching era as the time when it was brought about.
We could choose to retain old iniquities and inequalities. We could choose to leave our children a society where "selfish materialism, shrill begrudgery and apathy" had dulled idealism. Or we could choose to leave them a land of peace, prosperity, equal opportunity and respect for difference. "The choices are ours," the President said.
While prevented by the Constitution from intruding into matters of public policy, Mrs McAleese pointed clearly to the key political choices that have to be made. This was the first generation that could choose to eradicate poverty; the first which could choose to embrace multiculturalism and welcome foreigners seeking new opportunities; the first that could build and consolidate lasting peace on the island. Her speech was an attempt to summarise where our modern society came from, what it was now and the prospects for what it could become. Some of her themes were echoed yesterday afternoon when party leaders each made statements in the Dail to mark the last sitting of the millennium.
John Bruton questioned whether quality of life was rising as fast as gross national product. Ruairi Quinn spoke of "a growing spiritual impoverishment" at a time of increasing material prosperity. It was a day in which political philosophy made a rare appearance in the proceedings of the Oireachtas.
Mrs McAleese spoke of a "golden age" she said had existed in Ireland in the middle of the first millennium. It was a time, she said, when newly arrived Christianity had fused easily with existing Irish life, "growing side by side with the old pagan culture, with no anxiety to obliterate it". Respect for difference became enshrined in the rulebooks of convents and monasteries.
Now many of the conditions that facilitated "that former glorious period of our history" were falling into place again.
Lest we get lost in self-congratulation, she reminded her audience of where Ireland had come from. "Ireland is a First World country with a Third World memory, a memory to keep us humble, to remind us of the fragility of it all, a memory to remind us that too many people across the world wake up each day to lives of sheer terror and dread," she said.
Our history was "a litany of hopes raised and then dashed, one lament after another". Wars, rebellions, plantations and plagues brought awful suffering, culminating in the Great Famine.
Even senior citizens alive today could remember "when poverty and deprivation stalked the land". Grief sprang from the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the Civil War. Together with "the forgotten dead of Flanders", each of these events left behind "the scarring inheritance, the unfinished business of the next generation".
The new political dispensation in Northern Ireland, the economic transformation and new cultural self-confidence showed we were at a time of profound change. "The shadows of the past are lifting . . . the weight of the past is now lifting and opening new possibilities to us," she said.
The modern successful Ireland still had its problems of inequality and social exclusion that ensured many people were unable to develop their potential.
She said young people must be encouraged to become involved in public service. However, she acknowledged - without stating it explicitly - the crisis of confidence in the political process that had arisen, particularly from the stream of revelations at the tribunals of inquiry.
A culture of "righteous accountability" in public life could make us wiser and warier. However, she warned that the revelations could feed "an uncaring indifference, a cynicism which will erode our capacity to dream and to deliver dreams".
Above all, her message to the crowded Dail chamber was that politics can work, can change things, and that politicians and the people can and must choose how society will be shaped. The progress of politics in the North showed this to be true. The forgiveness, generosity, love and compassion of ordinary people, "who were and who are the very heart and soul of this phenomenon we call the peace process", proved the value of a hopeful outlook.
When cynics said it was impossible and nay-sayers threatened to make it impossible, she said, the story of these people "tells us why it is worth dreaming".