THE ONLY unusual aspect of a visit to the Republic of Queen Elizabeth II, mooted this week after her meeting in Belfast with President McAleese, is that it has not yet happened. Given that it is almost 12 years since former president Mary Robinson made the first official visit by an Irish head of state to the queen, normal diplomatic reciprocity would suggest that the compliment should have been returned a long time ago. Given, too, that Mrs McAleese issued an informal invitation to Queen Elizabeth during a meeting at Buckingham Palace in 2002, the extraordinary delay has made the whole issue of a state visit far more fraught than it needs to be.
The whole point of such a visit would be to recognise a happy state of affairs that already exists - the normalisation of relations between two neighbouring European states. By drawing out the process and making it contingent on the final devolution of policing powers to the Executive in Northern Ireland, the Government has already taken some of the good out of it. What, after all, is the problem with an official visit by the British head of state that the Taoiseach last year declared to be "inevitable"? That Britain is an enemy power? Hardly - no two governments have worked together more closely than the Irish and the British over the last 15 years. That her status as a monarch would offend our republican sensibilities? Hardly - the reigning monarchs of Norway, Belgium and Malaysia and the grand duke and duchess of Luxembourg have all been here on state visits since 2002. That the British royal presence would cause social tension? Hardly - Princess Anne, was in, of all places, Croke Park, last month for the Scotland/Ireland rugby match and most people barely noticed.
By building up the royal visit as an epoch-making event for which all the political conditions have to be perfectly in place, the Government is acting in an oddly colonial way. If the very thought of ushering the queen into our presence really fills us with such high anxiety, our claims to have cured ourselves of inherited colonial neuroses would seem rather thin. In fact, all the evidence from events such as last year's visit of the English rugby team to Croke Park suggests that we're rather more mature than the Government seems to think.
There will always be a noisy rump of fanatics who will delight in airing their anglophobia. There will always be a cringe-making few who will fawn over royalty. But the vast majority will recognise a royal visit for what it should be - a belated recognition of the neighbourly and consensual relationship between two sovereign states.