Some were cheering, others protesting, and the rest just observed the show. They were heady days. A tiny band of republicans, radicals and socialists organised the opposition. Countess Markievicz was imprisoned for addressing a 30,000 strong IRB protest.

The O'Rahilly unfurled a banner across Grafton Street, "Thou art not conquered yet dear land".

James Connolly said the British royal family had "opposed every forward move, fought every reform, persecuted every patriot".

Agreed in principle Nearly a century later, in the wake of the historic political breakthrough in the North, Queen Elizabeth is set to visit the Republic. Last week, President McAleese said conditions for a Royal visit were "as close to right as they have ever been".

The Sunday Tribune understands the trip has been agreed in principle by Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, the Government and the Aras. But will it be a courageous act of symbolism to show that Ireland and Britain, nationalism and unionism, are finally at peace?

Or is it just a shallow stunt, irrelevant to most citizens? Will it help reconciliation in the North or cause further division by encouraging the type of protests which marked last year's Love Ulster rally? And what will Celtic Tiger Ireland make of an octogenarian queen?

"Oh, they'll think she's great, " says Shankill Road community activist, Jimmy Creighton. "Hundreds of thousands will be on the streets of Dublin to see her. We used to think the Republic was full of Sinn Feiners but the Dail elections showed there's hardly any of them.

"I've no problem with the Queen visiting the Republic as long as nobody takes a pot shot at her. I hope the Irish government look after her properly, she means everything to us. She's loved all over the world. She's been to Africa and India, so why wouldn't she go to Ireland? The only place not keen on her is Australia because they're very republican."

The North's DUP Environment Minister, Arlene Foster, says the visit indicates "a new, more natural relationship" between the Republic and Britain. "It will be important to Southern Protestants in the Border counties and to the Anglo-Irish community in Dublin.

"But the Queen has wider appeal.

In her own quiet way, she's a role model for women. She came to the job aged only 26 and is now 81. She's operated all those years in a maledominated world. She has a deep sense of duty."

Anti-IRA campaigner, Willie Frazer, who is attempting to stage another Love Ulster rally in Dublin this summer, is less keen on a royal visit: "The Queen shouldn't come to Dublin until we're allowed to march there peacefully. We respect her, although she has let us down.

"The Protestants of Ulster and the Gurkhas have been her most loyal citizens but that loyalty has never been returned. She hasn't stood up for us, the people who made a bigger sacrifice for Queen and country than any others in the UK." Frazer is also concerned for the Queen's safety in the Republic:

"She could be met with the abuse and violence that greeted us last year."

Ulster Unionist peer, Lord Laird, has no such concerns: "The Queen will receive a wonderful reception.

They are far more deferential to class in Dublin than in Northern Ireland. If I was in a shop in east Belfast and tried to jump the queue, I'd be told 'catch yourself on big lad, get back in place'.

"But if I ring an exclusive Dublin restaurant on a busy night and say 'This is Lord Laird', I'll get a table no matter what. A woman in Dublin shook my hand and said she'd never met royalty. I told her I wasn't royalty but if I'm treated that well, the Queen will go down a bomb!"

Certainly, mainstream political opinion supports a Royal visit.

Despite several requests from the was available for comment on the matter, but the party is extremely unlikely to oppose the visit.

Very dignified Fianna Fail TD, Mary O'Rourke, says: "With the new political understanding on our island, it's appropriate the Queen visits. I don't think there'll be any significant protests.

We're past all that, we've matured . . .

and a good thing it is too." Is O'Rourke personally interested in the Queen? "Well, I'm more interested in Helen Mirren! But the Queen does a fair job and is very dignified."

Senator David Norris is hugely enthusiastic about the visit: "It will mark the normalisation of relationships between the two islands. The Queen is a lot more Irish than most of the republicans. She is a direct descendant of Hugh O'Neill and Brian Boru.

"And her mother was so Irish. A packet of fags, a bottle of gin in the handbag, punting on the nags, and the fairies in the kitchen . . . you couldn't get more Irish than that! I'm very fond of the Queen but I'm not so gone on her husband. He's a bit of a sour oul' brute but then he had an awful life before he met her."

Green deputy leader, Mary White, also welcomes a royal visit. "It would be a tremendously positive move representing the new dynamic between Ireland and Britain. It's part of a process of putting the past behind us and moving forward."

For many in the North, such arguments are unconvincing. Mickey Donnelly from Derry was one of 14 internees subjected to sensory deprivation techniques by the British Army in 1971. They were hooded, played white noise, beaten, deprived of sleep, and made to stand against a wall in the search position for hours until they fell down.

The European Court of Human Rights found Britain guilty of torture. Donnelly strongly opposes any royal visit. "It's not that I'm living in the past. The torture methods used on me are still being used today in Abu Ghraib and Basra in defence of Elizabeth Windsor's empire. The Queen is British head of state.

Endorsing her is endorsing what's happening in Iraq."

Not welcome in Derry "Just months after the first battalion of the paratroopers murdered 14 civilians in Derry on Bloody Sunday, the Queen rewarded Colonel Derek Wilford, the officer commanding the regiment, with an OBE. In 2004, she made another Bloody Sunday paratrooper an MBE. The Queen might be welcome in Dublin but she'll never be welcome in Derry."

Donnelly suspects the long-term goal of the visit is to attempt to bring the Republic back into the commonwealth. He is very critical of the President: "Mary McAleese should be spending less time with British monarchs and UDA leader Jackie McDonald, a convicted extortionist, and more time on the human rights issues that need addressing in Ireland."

Danny McBrearty, an ex-IRA prisoner whose brother George was shot dead by the SAS, says the Republicans Network for Unity, which represents 300 ex-republican prisoners, will be protesting against the Queen's visit: "It's sad so many Southern politicians are welcoming her. Ireland seems even more Anglicised now than pre-1916."

But Paddy Fox, another ex-IRA prisoner from Co Tyrone, says: "I can't see why the Queen's visit would cause a hullabaloo. She's just a visiting head of state. And at least this queen is being invited, the others arrived here unasked."

Much more confident Tom Kelly, a prominent SDLP member and chief executive of Stakeholder Communications, accepted an OBE last year amidst some criticism. He supports the royal visit:

"When England played Ireland at Croker, a lot of emotional and historical baggage was formally dumped. Irish people are much more confident now.

"And let's face it . . . the royals are one massive dysfunctional family and that fascinates people in the way soaps do. The Irish are not immune to such fascination." In 1979, the IRA killed the Queen's cousin, Lord Mountbatten. "I hope when the Queen comes someone says sorry for that. Reconciliation isn't a one-way street, " says Kelly.

McAleese's invitation is "a lovely gesture" says Anna Lo, Alliance Assembly member and the North's first Chinese elected representative: "It will help relationships between the communities here.

When fighting racism, you learn the importance of symbolic gestures. They filter down to the ground."

Richard Boyd-Barrett, the People Before Profit Dail candidate narrowly beaten in Dun Laoghaire, doesn't view the royal visit as progressive: "There is no good time for the Queen to visit Ireland. There is no place for a queen in a modern democracy.

"The royal family's enormous unearned wealth is an affront to the vast majority of working people struggling to live and put a roof over their heads. The whole notion of an elite, of one family seeing themselves as special, is obnoxious.

"Most ordinary Irish and British people aren't in conflict. They've so much in common. They share the same social and economic problems, watch the same TV programmes, support the same football teams. They don't need taxpayers' money wasted on all this pomp and ceremony. It isn't an 'act of reconciliation'. It's just a very expensive PR exercise by two governments."