GERRY Adams will next weekend seek to bring his party members one final step along the road of democratic politics. Sinn Féin's decision on policing in Northern Ireland should confirm the transformation of the political wing of the republican movement into a more than slightly constitutional, nationalist party. In effect, Sinn Féin would be a variation of the SDLP but with significant historical baggage.

The changing nature of the hard-line republican faction led by Adams can be traced back to a 1986 Sinn Féin decision to recognise the legitimacy of the parliament in Dublin and to allow successful party candidates to take their seats in Dáil �?ireann.

The 1986 decision usurped traditional republican dogma but it laid the ground for the concessions and compromises that followed including the 1994 IRA ceasefire, the acceptance of the principle of consent, the removal of Articles 2 and 3, participation in a reformed assembly at Stormont and, more recently, the decommissioning of IRA weapons.

Journalist and author Ed Moloney captures this republican transformation in his essay for Britain & Ireland: Lives Entwined II.

"It is no exaggeration to say that if, in the 1980s, Adams had gone to his colleagues on the Army Council and laid out the peace process in these terms - that the process would end with IRA leaders as ministers in a government with unionists while the IRA would decommission its weapons and go out of business - he would have been lucky to have survived the experience."

Moloney is a longtime critic of Adams. He is totally consistent with his previous writings in this anthology which includes nearly a dozen contributors on the changing relations between the two islands in the context of the Northern Ireland peace process - with several authors touching on how the US has also impacted on this relationship.

A former Northern Editor of this newspaper, Moloney is, however, not just tough in his assessment of the Adams leadership strategy. He also lambastes his media colleagues for being too unwilling to ask hard questions during the peace process era - "in practice many reporters shrank from doing their jobs and were - and still are - content to be mere stenographers of the peace process for fear that they could be accused, at the very least, of being 'unhelpful' to the process, and at worst, of being actively opposed to it."

Moloney's contribution will be seen by some as bitter scoresettling with former colleagues but his arguments deserve a wider forum. There is a serious absence of rigorous analysis and understanding of the Irish media.

From his current New York base it may well be that Moloney should consider a more wide-ranging narrative of his time in Irish journalism. It would be a fascinating read - agents and publishers take note; former colleagues be warned!

In a biographical note accompanying this essay, Moloney recalls that Vincent Browne first asked him to write about Northern Ireland. That invitation came in where he "teamed up for several more bumpy years with Browne - survived both his tenure and departure but then fell badly foul of one of Browne's many successors". The latter parting was in 2001.

Moloney's essay - along with that from former taoiseach John Bruton - are the stand-outs in this interesting collection which deserves a wide readership.

Nonetheless several essays suffer from the absence of a personal perspective, although Liz O'Donnell does recount returning to Dublin after the Good Friday Agreement was negotiated in April 1998.

"Arriving home to an empty house (my family had expected me to join them in Donegal for the weekend) I put on the kettle, only to find there was no milk. The house was cold. I sat in my coat and turned on the television. It was like an out-of-body experience. RT�? was still covering Stormont Buildings with endless analysis. The Democratic Unionist Party had staged an angry protest, with poisonous exchanges between the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party and Paisley.

"I don't share the euphoria. I think it was only the beginning, and that the scale of change set out in the Agreement was going to be very difficult to deliver."

The last nine years have confirmed O'Donnell's initial assessment. Next weekend it is probable that another of those "historic" steps will be taken as Northern Ireland moves closer to a point of political maturity with a functioning local government.

Kevin Rafter is Political Editor of the 'Sunday Tribune' and the author of 'Sinn Féin:

A Centenary History' which was published in 2005