IT is difficult to disagree with tánaiste Micheál Martin when he talks of the Good Friday Agreement's potential having been squandered.
Perhaps the most potent symbol of that failure is the continued absence of power-sharing at Stormont, which has been in cold-storage for 20 long, punishing months because of the DUP's internal difficulties over the Brexit deal it facilitated.
As when Sinn Féin withdrew from the institutions in 2017, leading to a collapse which lasted until the start of 2020, the vulnerability of our executive and assembly structures to the actions of the largest party on either the nationalist or unionist side is worrying. It is also dispiriting; 25 years on from the agreement, don't we deserve better?
It points, among other things, to the how reconciliation between our different communities and rich traditions has yet to take hold in deep and meaningful ways across all areas. Sectarianism remains entrenched; reconciliation has been the great miss of the past 25 years.
In his wide-ranging Shared Island address in Dublin on Wednesday, Mr Martin referred to how politics in Northern Ireland "is still largely defined by green and orange and a zero-sum framing of community competition on almost every issue".
The justified uproar over the legacy mechanisms imposed by the British government shows that for far too many families, the striking of the agreement in 1998 did not bring an end to the Troubles, at least in their lives.
It is widely regarded, however, as heralding a far more peaceful era. Mr Martin said the agreement had "consolidated an enduring peace" but that "we have simply not done enough to get to know and understand each other more".
There are a great many grassroots organisations involved in powerful reconciliation and community work. In the week that marked the 30th anniversary of the IRA's deadly Shankill Bomb, it is profoundly moving to reflect on the peace-building that has taken root and flourished from that dreadful tragedy.
Alan McBride, whose wife and father-in-law were killed in the attack, is a powerful witness to reconciliation: "We've lost more than many of these politicians and yet they can’t do this simple thing of actually sitting around the table and making this society work for everybody that’s here," he said outside a memorial service on Monday.
Priorities are surely skewed when the fallout from Brexit matters more than the reconciliation and wellbeing of citizens and communities.
