Harris will escape the deadzone that surrounds the Senate if anyone can, I thought to myself, as I processed the information that my taxes will be paying to keep him in the Upper House. I worked in RTE in the late '70s and early '80s and I have unforgettable memories of trade union meetings there at the time . . . which whatever they were supposed to be about always were about Northern Ireland and the media coverage of same. The meetings were always dominated by the Stickies . . . socialists of a kind, allegedly, though I don't recall any of them ever getting worked up about such core socialist issues as, say, nationalising the banks. Harris was the noisiest Stickie.

The Stickies believed that media manipulation was crucial to keeping the people of the Republic away from sympathy with northern republicanism. This position was not so much argued as enforced. Above all, it was enforced by censorship. They were ardent fans of Section 31. They didn't trust their colleagues who worked in the North. They didn't trust the audience in the south . . . they didn't trust nonStickie colleagues in the south, either. They didn't trust anyone who came from Northern Ireland, except for a few unionists. Even Mary McAleese, as personally honourable then as now, was judged, by the ideology dominant in RTE at the time she briefly worked there, to be over-sympathetic to northern nationalism. She couldn't help knowing what living in Belfast was like since she lived in Belfast, but that was quite enough to make her suspect.

But where are the Stickies now?

And where is Mrs McAleese now?

And look at Ireland now.

The people of the Republic didn't need to be protected against themselves. They've never given even their votes in any significant number to northern nationalists, much less their lives. They relinquished the fourth green field as soon as the big boys asked for it politely. Soon there will be an all-island Ireland, united by utter, unashamed, consumer capitalism. There'll be 32 green fields full of shopping centres. The bullying and backbiting and fake righteous anger used against individuals suspected of sympathy with northern nationalism in RTE was unnecessary, though it left deep marks on those who witnessed it, never mind on those on the receiving end of it. It was a waste. And the perpetrators were wasted just as certainly as the victims.

In RTE and in the Irish Times, the Stickies were often the cleverest and most determined people around. Eoghan Harris himself was a tremendous personality. As he goes off to the Senate, which cannot be said to be a potent institution, the thought of what he might have been in domestic politics had he chosen the path of direct influence, goes with him.

All of them could have made a huge and lasting difference to Ireland if they'd fought against, say, property speculators and their facilitators in local government, or, say, against the corruption that spread out from Charlie Haughey, with the same fervour they opposed northern nationalism. But as it was, within the southern media, an undeclared civil war raged, on the issue of attitudes to the Troubles. Some people couldn't win. In journalism alone, for example, there was an influx of talented people from Northern Ireland who could not find work in the abnormal situation obtaining there. Those people had to make their way in the south, usually in the face of ignorance and prejudice about their home place. They could never be nice enough about unionism to pass the Stickie test. Within the media their advancement was less to do with talent than with political correctness, though what political correctness actually was varied from boss to boss and how close he was to which Stickie.

As for Section 31, it was a pale imitation of a tactic familiar to anyone used to the ways of Moscow. I mean, when Moscow said the people massacred at Babi Yar weren't Jews but Soviet freedom fighters, you'd better believe it. Black was white if the politburo said so. Here, the idea was that if the local broadcasting channels pretended northern nationalism wasn't there, it wouldn't be there. This was as old-fashioned a piece of state manipulation as citizens of a free country are ever likely to see. Actually in retrospect it is almost funny, as well as pitiable.

If I had my time back, I'd be sure to be somewhere else . . . anywhere else . . . other than in RTE before, during and in the aftermath of the hunger strikes. There were workers there who were treated by fellow-workers as human beings should not be treated. I got nothing worse than being shouted at and stopped a few times in the corridor for sneers about "your Provo friends." But just being at the meetings, cowering at the back, was traumatic. I've never been able to enjoy a Harris Harangue since, much as I appreciate the form. Ivor Callely, however, and John Ellis and the other senators come to the live performance new, and it doesn't matter anyway what shapes anyone throws in the Oireachtas playschool. The past is over. Good luck to all of them.