Four months after the Republic's general election, the deal has finally been done to establish a new coalition government in Dublin. Nothing unusual in that, you might think, except that this particular arrangement brings together the two parties that dominated Irish politics for decades, but in opposition to each other. Fenafal and Fine Gael, the two parties born out of the Civil War, are about

to kiss and make up. So on today's red lines, is the Civil War divide now consigned to the

dustbin of history? Brian? Only if we discount partition, which we're not going to be able to do.

Alison?

Well, I guess it's symbolically, if they do manage to get together both those parties, we could say they are, but I think there would be a certain section of the population who in their hearts at least would cling on to it.

Gavin.

Everybody thought that the scorpion and the frog had made a deal until they got halfway

across the river and then it turns out that some of them just couldn't stifle their

own natures.

We'll wait and see.

You don't sound very optimistic, do you?

And of course, before anything else happens, the deal needs to be signed off by the

respective parties. Members, my guests, today for this look back into Ireland's political

history and forward into the politics of the future, are the historian and author Brian Hanley,

the commentator and columnist Alison O'Connor and the political correspondent for Virgin Media News,

Gavin Riley. So, Gavin, you're not

persuaded that it's no more cute hers versus the blue shirts then?

Not particularly, and I think first and foremost, you do have to wait and see whether the

deal gets ratified. And with the way that Finnegale's electoral college is structured,

I don't think there's much danger of it falling down on that front, because the Finnegale Parliamentary Party holds most of the clout as far as that goes, and they are broadly in favour of it. So Finnegell will get it over the line. Fianafall is probably also in all seriousness also likely to get it over the line, although it will be interesting to see exactly what quotient of the phenofal grassroots who have one member,

one vote, exactly what proportion of them do decide to reject this because they simply can't

stomach the idea of doing a deal with Finnegale, and largely for the historical reasons that I

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