IT WAS a fine coincidence that on Tuesday vhen the Tanaiste launched the Government's White Paper on Irish foreign policy, the President, Mrs Robinson, was in Cape Town to address the South African parliament, it was an occasion which, in its emotional impact clearly went far beyond the diplomatic courtesies of a state visit. Introducing the President, Dr Kader Asmal spoke of his time at Trinity and how Dublin had provided a haven where he and his wife, Louise, could organise the Irish Anti Apartheid Movement.
President Mandela said South Africa would "never forget" the support of the Irish people during the long years of struggle. His comments seemed to embrace not only the actions of governments but the sometimes heroic efforts of so called ordinary citizens.
Edward O'Loughlin reported that ANC senators and MPs "nodded appreciatively" when Mrs Robinson recalled how young workers at Dunnes Stores had lost their jobs when they refused to handle South African produce. The subsequent strike engaged enormous public sympathy and led to the Government changing its policy on imports from South Africa.
The exchange of speeches illustrated, in the most dramatic way, the vision which Dick Spring embraced when he decided, against the advice of the sceptics, to produce a White Paper on Irish foreign policy. The Tanaiste wrote in this newspaper yesterday: "I wanted to stimulate greater public debate on, and understanding of, foreign policy in order to produce a deeper sense of public ownership of what has sometimes been mistakenly viewed as a rarefied chapter of public policy."
It is greatly to the credit that he and his officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs have gone to such pains to encourage debate on Ireland's role in international affairs. There have been public meetings around the country. Submissions have been solicited from organisations and individuals on subjects that include development aid, neutrality, foreign peacekeeping, international trade, the future of the European Union and many others.
THE result is Challenges and Opportunities Abroad, a 348 page document available for £8 from the Government Publications. I have bought my copy and placed it, alongside a dauntingly high pile of other worthy tomes, on the table beside my bed.
But even a cursory reading of its main points raises doubts that the White Paper is going to set the phone lines jangling to Gerry Ryan and Gay Byrne.
If Mr Spring really wants to produce a "deeper sense of public ownership of foreign policy" - and I'm sure he does - his officials are going to have to think of ways of making the issues more urgently relevant. The role of the media, particularly television, is crucial in this context.
Inevitably, given Ireland's impending presidency of the European Union, much of the White Paper is concerned with the hard choices facing member states in the immediate future and how Ireland's economic and political interests can best be protected.
On the one hand we look forward to the challenge of enlargement; on the other the admission of poorer states must not be allowed to threaten the financial support on which we have depended so heavily and for so long. That sort of thing. Security issues, the thorny problem of neutrality take up a lot of space.
But there is also much in the White Paper about issues to which Ireland can bring an individual perspective and which are also likely to appeal to the public imagination. The focus on human rights, a proper and more generous allocation of aid to developing countries, concern for the future of the UN; these are all issues to which many Irish people already feel a strong commitment.
The reasons for this were well put by Kader Asmal when he spoke of this country's experience of colonialism. This history is unique among the present members of the EU and puts a heavy responsibility on us and one to which we have not always in the past responded to represent the interests of those on the receiving end of discrimination and injustice.
At a personal level we react with extraordinary generosity to images of famine and disaster. Our overseas aid workers are a synonym for constructive compassion. On occasions, when these qualities have been harnessed to political action, they have been a potent force for change.
Foreign diplomats, for example, are mystified by Ireland's continuing concern about what is happening in East Timor. Yet this policy is largely the result of the driving energy and intelligent commitment of one man, Tom Hyland, an unemployed bus driver who watched a television documentary on Indonesian human rights abuses in East Timor and decided that something must be done about it.
Last week in the United States I listened to Arthur Schlesinger jnr, the distinguished historian, give an impassioned lecture on the threat to democracy posed by the increasing fragmentation of apparently stable societies into ethnic and tribal groups.
The most obvious and tragic example of this has been the break up of the former Yugoslavia - an issue on which Ireland could and should have played a much sharper role in monitoring and influencing the European Union's policy.
But Dr Schlesinger also speculated on what could happen to the independent states which have emerged from the former Soviet Union and the ethnic and tribal tensions that abound.
IT IS in this area of potential conflict that Ireland's recent experience is of great importance. When we look at the Northern peace process on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, it is too easy to become depressed by the lack of movement, the failures in generosity. What we forget is how much we have all moved, nationalists and unionists alike, in putting behind us the deadly tribal simplicities of the past.
Sinn Fein is at one with other Irish nationalist parties in no longer believing that it is either possible or desirable to coerce unionists into a united Ireland. Unionist leaders, even David Trimble at his most "bilious", know their community wants to work out some way of living with their nationalist neighbours, even though this will involve compromises.
This change in attitudes has been brought about in large part by individuals and communities determined to build bridges across the tribal divide, through church groups, community associations, education to promote greater understanding and so on.
President Robinson was absolutely right when she said that South Africa's success in building reconciliation against great odds had struck a deep chord in Ireland. But this country's efforts to heal ancient divisions are also very close to the problems facing countries in Europe and further afield in the Middle East and Africa.
It is by informing ourselves on these areas, relating their problems to our own, that we can best help to build a greater public interest, and thus a "deeper sense of public ownership" of foreign policy.