THERE is little doubt that the lack of an agreed and comprehensive approach to addressing the enormous challenges posed by Northern Ireland's troubled past continues to haunt the present and stymie the future.
In that unpromising context, the fact that PSNI chief constable George Hamilton and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister, shared a platform at an event discussing the legacy of the Troubles is a positive development of symbolic significance.
That the event took place in west Belfast as part of Féile an Phobail and was attended by leading republicans, including former IRA paramilitaries who would once would have targeted Mr Hamilton's predecessors and their RUC colleagues, emphasises the length of the strides that have already been taken towards a more peaceful Northern Ireland.
On the agenda was a series of the most controversial issues facing society, including the many hundreds of unsolved Troubles killings, historic allegations of police collusion and wrongdoing, the threat posed by dissident republicans and continuing sectarianism.
Mr McGuinness said Mr Hamilton deserved credit for attending the discussion, which was picketed by around 200 people protesting at the chief constable's presence.
It was, said Mr McGuinness, "no easy journey" for a senior police office to participate in such an event in "a place like west Belfast".
For his part, Mr Hamilton said he had decided to speak at the event because he believed the vast majority of people want a better future "for the next generation, for my children and yours".
Jaw-jaw is better than war-war, as Winston Churchill once observed, so it is encouraging that figures who would once have been foes are able to debate differences in a cordial atmosphere.
And yet there must also be a sense of disappointment that, a long 17 years since the signing of the Good Friday agreement, the chief constable sharing a platform with the deputy first minister is still regarded as something of a novelty and that real progress has not been made in dealing with the legacy of the Troubles.
Last December's Stormont House agreement ultimately foundered on the rocks of welfare reform, but the section dealing with the past may be one of the elements still salvageable from the wreckage.
Enormous difficulties remain - there is no consensus among republicans and unionists on the definition of a victim, for example, or on how a 'truth recovery' mechanism might work - but Mr Hamilton is among those who believe the structures envisaged by the Stormont House agreement hold potential for making progress.
Courage is needed by all involved - politicians, civic leaders, wider society - to turn that potential into reality, and move beyond acts which are symbolic to those which offer a real foundation for a stable future.
