It seems almost an indecency to refer to the existence of anything called "Northern Ireland politics" in the wake of last Saturday's disaster at Omagh and the appalling suffering and grief it engendered.
The whole of Northern Ireland has been traumatised and normal political activity and debate virtually suspended. Senior politicians who were quietly preparing for the resumed sitting of the Assembly next month will instead spend most of this week attending funerals and trying to impart some sort of consolation, however feeble and inadequate, to the devastated relatives.
The beginnings of normal political life which emerged after the Belfast Agreement have temporarily disappeared. Normality is "on hold" as people attempt to come to terms with the loss of so many lives.
Out of very great evil, sometimes good can come. Young people who may have been tempted to the path of violence and who were not old enough to be affected by the La Mon or Enniskillen bombings can now see the consequences of violence spelt out in the starkest terms.
The obscenity of the Omagh events has put the two governments under pressure to come up with instant solutions to the tangled problem of coping with tiny but elusive paramilitary groups. Harsh measures would certainly be popular at this time but the challenge for Dublin and London is to come up with proposals that will contain the violence without conferring victim status on the paramilitaries.
Eventually the politicians will have to resume the task of building a new consensus between the two communities. The issue of when the first meeting of the shadow executive will be held and whether traditional enemies will end up sitting around the same table will not go away. The October 31st deadline for agreeing the list of areas for cross-Border co-operation remains.
The isolation of the "Real IRA", as it is called, could hardly be more complete at the present time, and there were reports that a key figure in the organisation was "on the run" from both the security forces and mainstream Provisionals. Meanwhile, a fund-raising event for the 32-County Sovereignty Movement, scheduled to take place in New York on Thursday, has been postponed. Some of the more prominent supporters of Irish republicanism in the US are from Co Tyrone and it is understood they are not impressed, to say the least, by the events of last Saturday.
However, there are no indications that the new paramilitary group will be persuaded to call off its campaign by the wave of public revulsion to the Omagh bomb. It is understood the mainstream Provisionals sent a representative to meet their erstwhile comrades a few weeks ago in an attempt to win them back to the fold but the emissary received a decidedly dusty answer.
Tensions are said to be extremely high between mainstream and dissident Provisionals. The Omagh bomb was interpreted in mainstream Provisional circles as an attempt by the dissidents to show they could operate freely in yet another part of Northern Ireland: staking a claim over territory and cocking a snook at the mainstream leadership.
It has emerged that the vote at the November IRA convention in Gweedore, Co Donegal, on the issue of continuing with the peace process was quite a narrow one. The success of the mainstream leaders in outmanoeuvring their opponents has left a legacy of personal animosity between some of the senior figures on both sides.
While we will never know for certain what the late Bobby Sands - claimed as an icon by both factions - would make of Saturday's events, the position of Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh, president of Republican Sinn Fein, was clear and unequivocal. In a statement which surprised some observers by its bluntness, he deplored the "absolute inhumanity" of the "slaughter of innocents" at Omagh and concluded: "It is a severe setback to the project of achieving British government disengagement from Ireland and blurs British responsibility for the situation here."
However, unlike his former associates in Provisional Sinn Fein, Mr O Bradaigh is not standing on the threshold of government in Northern Ireland as well as membership of the cross-Border bodies and, unlike them, will not have to cope with the pressures to come "on side" and join an alliance to crush the remaining paramilitary threat - although security matters are outside the remit of the new Assembly. The story of democratic politics in Northern Ireland is only just beginning.