They gathered to renew their vows at what Padraic Pearse described as the holiest place in Ireland.
Fianna Fail Cabinet Ministers, TDs and national executive members stood shoulder to shoulder at the grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown, Co Kildare, yesterday morning for the party's annual celebration of its republican heritage.
Before the ceremony the party's leading lights relaxed in the autumn sunshine. The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, danced to the tunes played by a local brass band, while the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, rubbed Dr Rory O'Hanlon's ears, in an attempt to ensure the chairman did not get chilled while waiting to enter the cemetery.
Some 200 of the faithful were welcomed by the Taoiseach as "members of Fianna Fail, the Republican Party". Below the podium from which Mr Ahern spoke, a plaque bore Tone's declaration that he had always "regarded the connection between England and Ireland as the curse of the Irish nation".
Given the setting, Mr Ahern had to acknowledge the anti-English past of his party while being careful not to upset any applecarts in the North. "The principle of consent counted for very little in the heyday of the British Empire," the Taoiseach said but added quickly that since the Belfast Agreement things had changed dramatically and Stormont was no longer "a cold house for Catholics". The Government was working "extremely well" with Tony Blair and the best way to go about fulfilling Tone's "ultimate ideal" was to give the Belfast Agreement "a fair wind", the Fianna Fail leader said.
The eulogy to a giant of Ireland's past over, the Taoiseach was brought back to the present with a bang. A firing squad of reporters surrounded him, keen to draw blood over the nurses' strike and the Moriarty tribunal. Not even on the holiest sod in the land is a Taoiseach safe.
