By Paddy Clancy

TAOISEACH (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern has said the Republic will help pay for the reconstruction and development of Northern Ireland.

While there were no figures put on the commitment, it had been suggested that it could cost more than $1.25 billion.

“We are prepared to play our part,” Ahern told party members and supporters at the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, Co. Kildare on Sunday.

Britain would also be providing money, and Ahern and the U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair also planned to go to the European Union in a bid to seek further funding there as part of an overall settlement of the peace process.

The money would be used mainly to fund motorways, energy links and healthcare in The North.

In upbeat mood about progress — his speech was just days either side of meetings between Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley and Dr. Robin Eames, leader of the Anglican Church in Ireland — Ahern spoke also of Nationalists and Unionists being closer in purpose and understanding now than at any time over the past two centuries.

The Bodenstown ceremony is traditionally the occasion for a major speech on the North by Fianna Fail leaders.

“A final and lasting peace is within our grasp,” Ahern declared as he extended a sweetened commercial carrot to the people of the North with the assertion that the Good Friday Agreement, along with the more recent St. Andrews Agreement, would allow greater prosperity and equality for all.

He cited busy Derry Airport, which caters for passengers from Co. Donegal as well as from within the North, as an example of well cooperation between the communities and governments can work. There would be talks at the highest level between the two governments on other areas that could benefit from cooperation.

He suggested that there is a very strong case for a standard rate of low corporation tax to be applied right across the country, north and south, despite the difficulties that would create by applying different tax measures in the North to those that would apply in Britain.

“It obviously would make trading on the island of Ireland better because what is happening now is more and more of the multi-national companies that are in either part of Ireland are forced to have one corporate headquarters but two totally different accounting systems,” Ahern said.

In a thinly-veiled reference to the nationalist aspiration for unity, Ahern said, “Leaving aside longer-term constitutional wishes, the modern Irish state has much to offer through cooperation and joint effort which can serve the welfare of all the people of this island.”

In 200 years there had never been as much dialogue and interaction between significant political groupings on the island of Ireland as there is today, Ahern said. Nor had there ever been such broad agreement as exists now on the political framework that would govern the future evolution of relations within the North, between north and south, and between Britain and Ireland.

In an unexpected passage, Ahern quoted Paisley and reminded the attendance of the historic importance of the reference, reminding them it was probably the first time the Democratic Unionist Party leader had ever been quoted at Bodenstown.

Ahern said: “Mr. Paisley said at St. Andrews that we were at a crossroads. He spoke of a new light that could shine on our children and our grandchildren. We do not agree on everything but we share those sentiments.”

Ahern also praised Blair for his “extraordinary historic contribution to the consolidation of peace in Ireland.”

Referring to former British Prime Minister William Gladstone’s remark in 1868 that his mission was “to pacify Ireland,” Ahern added the remark, “It is Tony Blair who has actually achieved it.”