Not just Northern Ireland but the whole island is a sea of grief this week. Public life has become one long, heart-breaking funeral dirge. The sheer cumulative force of so much tragedy and the constant stream of funerals, especially those of young people, has had a strong impact on public consciousness.
Things will never be the same again, people are saying, although a still, small voice reminds us that the same was said after Enniskillen, the Shankill bomb and other atrocities going as far back as Bloody Sunday.
The Taoiseach moved fast, taking the initiative and using the moral authority of the united vote, North and South, in favour of the Belfast Agreement to bring in his package of measures against the last of the republican diehards.
The `Real IRA' has achieved one thing which even that organisation may not have wished to bring about. The spirit of the agreement was one of relaxing emergency legislation: it pledged the British government to "the removal of emergency powers in Northern Ireland" and the document also committed Dublin to "a wide-ranging review of the Offences Against the State Acts 1939-85 with a view to both reform and dispensing with those elements no longer required as circumstances permit".
That was then, this is now. Interestingly, senior political sources on the British side chose to view the proposed changes in the Republic as a "harmonisation" of legal approaches, North and South. With just a faint hint of smugness, they continued that most of the provisions about to be put in place in the Republic were already available to the authorities in the North.
This had been made possible by the unanimity of response on both sides of the Border to the Omagh disaster. Even more than after Enniskillen, people were speaking with one voice.
Mr Blair and Dr Mowlam have said that legal changes are being seriously considered to ensure members of proscribed organisations, specifically in this case the `Real IRA', can be sent to prison. Various departments were already looking at this.
However, there is little indication at this stage that parliament will be recalled earlier than the scheduled date of October 17th. On the internment issue, British sources pointed out that although the power had been dropped the option of reintroducing it remained and they noted that Dublin had gone for "more targeted, specific measures".
Some observers believe the era of tolerance for militant republicanism is coming to an end. Even Sinn Fein had crossed the Rubicon and used the "c" word, condemning the Omagh attack. Can it really be that there will be no more blind eyes or "safe houses"? Old habits die hard.
The Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, has written to Mr Blair expressing his concern that London's response to the Omagh attack should be no less forceful than Dublin's.
It is not every day, especially over the past 30 years, that we have seen an Ulster Unionist leader praising Dublin for cracking down on republicans. And it must surely be unprecedented that, in the course of his letter, Mr Trimble warns of "the potential situation of known terrorists from the Republic of Ireland fleeing to Northern Ireland for sanctuary from the Republic's new measures". The notion of republicans finding a new El Paso in, say, Newry instead of Dundalk, is startling indeed.
A white South African politician was reported to have said in the 1960s that he would give up all his country's armoury of repressive legislation for one provision of the North's Special Powers Act. There is no shortage of legislation here to "tackle the terrorists", but legislation on its own will not be particularly effective if the climate of opinion is not favourable to a crackdown. At present, with the island convulsed in grief, such a crackdown might well be possible. But public opinion is a fickle thing.
One side-effect of Dublin's actions may be to shore up the position of Mr Trimble in his own party. Those who believe, no doubt correctly, that Mr Trimble's political survival is crucial to the success of the Belfast Agreement are more relaxed about his position than heretofore, but still worry that senior supporters of his could yet jump ship.
One of the effects of the Omagh disaster will probably be to put the decommissioning issue even higher on the political agenda than heretofore. When what passes for normal political life here resumes, the "d" word will once again be ringing loud and clear across the airwaves.