Political ties may be better than ever but the two parts of this island are still as estranged as ever, writes Fionnuala O Connor.
IT LEAPS out from all sides. The larger State on this island feels no warmth for the smaller one and the feeling is returned, although one section in the North will never say so in public.
President Mary McAleese meets Queen Elizabeth in Belfast with mutual civility: but the more politicised woman knows that the people of her State wish her birthplace was off their map.
The two jurisdictions have much in common: they are also strange to each other. What are VHI and the Mahon tribunal to scratchily peaceful Northern Ireland? Who in the Republic can sympathise with northerners insisting RTÉ Radio One keeps its time-honoured wavelength?
Alienation, that's the word. But mutual, and lack of passion can be a good thing.
Some who would have pounced on terminological inexactitudes not long ago have begun to blink at them - perhaps no more than a sign of maturity.
Bertie Ahern has his own way with language but he is not the only Minister who speaks of 32-county "Ireland" when he means 26-county "Republic". And when the Taoiseach helicoptered into the grounds of a luxury Ballymena hotel last month to meet Ian Paisley in his hometown, the Reverend Ian said it was a good day for Ireland. More than that, he went on to refer to the region of which he is still First Minister as "the north of Ireland".
In its own way, it was as remarkable as that first sight of Paisley sitting next to Gerry Adams in Stormont a year ago. This time, nobody commented.
A lonely couple protested at the Ballymena meeting, Ruby Gillespie and her councillor husband Roy bewailing the fall of their former idol. Ruby Gillespie used to be a star turn at DUP conferences, bouncing on to the platform to aim flirtatious tributes at "the Big Man". Now she lamented, in tones of genuine, eloquent heartbreak: "We used to have a great man who led us and spoke out for us. We believed him, and we were let down. God help us, for we have no help. We're lost. Where's our children going to end up? In a united Free State?" Her capital letters were plain to hear.
It was as well that the Gillespies were too far away to hear the First Minister's linguistic offence. Not his first such lapse, but aggravated by the nearness of the leader from the foreign country.
It would have been notched up as another latter-day sin, up there with the synchronised smiling. It seems unlikely to have escaped the notice of Chief Prosecutor Jim Allister, whose mills grind exceeding small.
Even he may have decided not to include every verbal slip in the indictment. Yet not long ago there would have been nothing small about it.
Until his retirement in 2001, there was a ripple of general unionist tension when deputy first minister Seamus Mallon began to speak, because they knew he would make at most one reference to "Northern Ireland", then bang cheerily on for the rest of his remarks about "the north of Ireland". Mere Mallon mischief, but taken as deliberate provocation, irredentist nationalism intent on demeaning the North's autonomy.
Ann Marie Hourihane might envy Belfast Ikea but few of her fellow citizens are disposed to let clever, reasonably-priced furniture warm their hearts, though they might come up for a gawk.
Optimists think the economies may grow together rather than move further apart, but you do not have to accept everything Garret FitzGerald says about the economic damage the IRA did North and South to think him correct in supposing the gap will not be closed.
The two cannot be made one without a cost that nobody wants to pay, even without consideration of revived, potentially murderous, loyalist reaction, even if the Tiger gets its stripy legs under it again.
The GAA is the only unifying agency on the island, though a mystery to most northern Protestants - and a few Catholics, it must be said. It is the experience the Irish in the North have traditionally craved, the feeling of oneness with the separated brethren down the road, ever harder to sustain. Sentiment rarely trumps economic self-interest, and the sentiment has been fading for a long time.
Sinn Féin's gunk in last year's Dáil election was the sharpest revelation of distance for them to date, the nastiest contrast with Northern success. It does not really matter that the contest between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael relegated the smaller parties. Effect was more important than causes. Republicans are still struggling with the death of the "transitional" dream, of gradual reunification via North/Southery with SF ministers on both sides of the table.
Unionists may not know what to make of modern "Ireland", the name most use for the neighbouring state. But then Northern nationalism is equally at a loss - and what is Irish nationalism today?
The larger State on this island feels no warmth for the smaller one and the feeling is returned