Hannan's Call to Order

After the events of the weekend it's tempting to think that Wales's special relationship with Ireland consists of little more than being defeated at rugby in Cardiff every two years.

It has been happening for so long that it has become more of a time-honoured ritual rather than a serious sporting contest.

But there's more to it than that.

Ireland's defeat of Wales in Cardiff

The truth is that Wales is now also important in the Irish scheme of things for much deeper political reasons.

One of the oddest events I've been at this year was a lunch given at the National Assembly for Wales on St David's Day for the Irish Prime Minister - the Taoiseach - Bertie Ahern.

It was a sedate affair, attended chiefly by politicians and civil servants.

People talked to their neighbours, ate their food, drank their wine until, at twenty-five past two, quite abruptly, the Taoiseach and the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, got up and left.

Lunch was over. No public word of greeting or acknowledgement was uttered by anyone.

Those left in the room turned to each other and wondered what it had all been about. No-one could come up with an explanation.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.

But it was a significant event nevertheless. The very presence of Mr Ahern was further evidence of the courtship going on between Ireland and Wales.

It's a process that takes its most substantial form in the decision by the Irish government, following the devolution referendum of 1997, to establish a high-level diplomatic presence in both Wales and Scotland.

The man sent to Cardiff as consul-general was Conor O'Riordan, a man clearly chosen for that deceptively easy charm the Irish often bring to public affairs.

This week, as it happens, he is moving on to take over the Edinburgh job.

He has been replaced by James Carroll, another very experienced figure from the Irish Diplomatic service.

The quality of the people concerned is an indication of the importance of the posting.

It's very much in the Irish interest that devolution should succeed, in particular because it is a process under which the traditional structures of the United Kingdom are already coming to seem less rigid

You may well ask, as many people do, what lies behind this flattering and unusual attention to Wales.

The answer is at least in part in the arrival of devolution.

It's very much in the Irish interest that devolution should succeed, in particular because it is a process under which the traditional structures of the United Kingdom are already coming to seem less rigid.

As it goes on people will perhaps come to accept more fluid relationships between its constituent parts and between those constituent parts and the Republic of Ireland.

Indeed, that kind of change has already been recognised, in a modest way, by the establishment, under the Good Friday Agreement, of the British Irish Council which contains representatives of the Scottish parliament, the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies and the Dail, the Irish parliament.

At the same time Irish economic success, which is both admired and envied from this side of the water, has been firmly based on that country's wholehearted embrace of the benefits of membership of the European Union.

That too is at the heart of a changing relationship with the United Kingdom.

Common interests within the same organisation may be another route to easing ancient tensions.

For such reasons Wales has its particular place in this political jigsaw as the diplomatic world changes, even if the rugby results remain pretty much the same.

Patrick Hannan's weekly political programme, Called to Order, is live on Radio Wales, 93-104FM, 882 and 657AM, and DSat channel 867.

You can also listen to BBC Radio Wales live online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/live/rwv5.ram.

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