Okay, so what exactly did we achieve last week in Washington? Yep, we definitely ticked off the Brits, which is always good for a laugh. The powers that be in Westminster and their Washington flunkeys are fairly seething that Brian Cowen and his entourage was practically given the keys to the White House and the Capitol. And that, that the whole of Washington – from the White House fountain to the gills of countless dozens of Congressmen – turned green in honour of the freshly upgraded annual Irish Dog and Pony Show.

"Barack Obama treats Ireland as a Prince, but Britain as a Pauper," the near apoplectic Telegraph railed, observing acidly that: "Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach of Ireland, is hardly a world figure, but he received the kind of red-carpet treatment in Washington that would normally be reserved for royalty" (ie the Brits). In one of the more amusing tirades about the St Patrick's Day lovefest, it fumed that "the Irish PM has no influence whatsoever over the policies of the United States. Yet he was granted a 40-minute meeting. When Gordon Brown was received at the White House at the start of March he was denied a press conference as well as an official dinner and was treated in a humiliating, demeaning fashion." As Al Gore would say, there's no need to get snippy.

And with a cavalier disregard for cliche and tired old canards, the matter of Cowen's teleprompter malfunction was put down to the fact he was "either taking on delusions of grandeur or had over-indulged in St Patrick's Day drinking". In fact, the gaffe was due to the bungled loading of the teleprompter by White House staff, and by that point, after a day of photo-opping and back-slapping and gushing mutual admiration, the Taoiseach and the US president appeared so joined at the hip they may as well have been joined at the head. They were literally reading from the same page.

Certainly, Gordon Brown didn't seem to be suffering from the same sort of irrational exuberance as Cowen, who appeared hell bent on offering Irish citizenship to any American who ever disembarked from a tour bus outside Trinity College. Not only did Cowen borrow Obama's speech, he did a passable imitation of Lady Liberty herself, urging Obama to give us the US's 44 million sick and bewildered Irish-Americans, or at the very least, allow us to give them a big certificate to prove their Irish ancestry, which would allow them to jump ahead of everyone else in the entry line at Dublin airport.

That Cowen wants to expand ways of obtaining Irish citizenship for Irish-Americans is more than a little worrying. Given the US's current woes and the fact that its rapidly aging population is now looking down the twin-barrelled future of rapidly decreasing retirement benefits and rapidly escalating healthcare costs, we could find the entire state of Florida decamping to our less than sunny shores, where they could at least claim a pension and a medical card. Money for nothing and your hips for free.

The Taoiseach also extended his offer to the inmates at Gitmo who, having gotten used to all that Cuban sunshine, will doubtless find their heels considerably cooled in Ireland. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, assured the Sunday Tribune that Ireland would only be taking the chaps who would suit a free-range sort of existence. The CIA is all in favour of keeping a large number in the battery-hen conditions to which they have become accustomed, albeit somewhere less scenic than Guantanamo. Like Nebraska.

Martin McGuinness said Northern Ireland would "definitely be open" to taking a few of the boys from Gitmo, free range or otherwise, before hastily adding that of course he couldn't say anything definitive until he checked with the missus, ie Peter Robinson. You know the peace process is in robust health when Martin McGuinness avoids saying anything controversial for fear he'll upset the unionists. Still, it's a shame to leave what's left of those H-blocks lying empty.

So aside from ticking off the Brits and declaring Ireland open for terrorist suspects and Irish American OAPs, what else did did the White House round-the-clock knees-up achieve?

Well, it managed to bring a smile, nay a big beefy perma-grin, to Brian Cowen's saturnine features. No mean feat, when you couple these troubled times with his less than vivacious disposition. From a public relations perspective, it may have been a good thing that he and the rest of the Irish contingent were so dazzled by Obama. They certainly didn't seem to notice that while the day's meetings and speeches were long on camaraderie and wisecracks, they were more than a little shy on good news.

The announcement that a special envoy is being appointed to Northern Ireland seemed to come as news to the Department of State, which is charged with making such appointments. At this point in the peace process, precisely what would a special envoy do? No one at the Department of State seems to know the answer to that one either. The DOS appeared even more perplexed by First Minister Peter Robinson's claim that Obama is poised to appoint an official to examine investment opportunities between Northern Ireland and the US.

Never mind what such an envoy would actually do at this point, nobody has been appointed to either position, a Department of State official told the Sunday Tribune. "I am not going to speculate on whether or not a special envoy will be appointed, but nothing is in place as of now," he said.

A separate source suggested to the Sunday Tribune that it is extremely unlikely that a dedicated special envoy of the calibre of Senator George Mitchell or Richard Haass would be appointed, given the demands on the Department of State and the paucity of top-notch candidates who can be dispatched to more urgent global flashpoints. What is more likely is that "someone at the Department of State will be given the Northern Ireland folder along with a bundle of other folders," he said.

Despite all the bonding, both Obama and Hillary Clinton were noticeably non-committal about visiting Ireland. Obama allowed that he would visit "at some point" while Clinton politely suggested she had bigger fish to fry and that, anyway, her colleagues at the Department of State wouldn't regard a trip to Ireland as work.

There was also precious little progress on the issue of undocumented Irish workers in the US – aside from a tacit acceptance by the Irish government that the prospect of any special deal for undocumented Irish is dead in the water. Instead of trying to find a solution for the thousands of Irish currently working illegally, the Irish government will focus on pushing a new bilateral deal that would allow thousands of Irish citizens to receive renewable two-year work visas for the US.

Meanwhile, Micheál Martin warned Irish citizens who are thinking of working illegally in the US to rethink their plans. "I would tell them unequivocally not to do it," he said. "I know that will be unpopular but I've met the undocumented Irish in America, I've met the delegations and its heart-rending to see people who have put 10 years of work into building a business and a home and then to see it all go for naught because they're refused reentry after a wedding. I've seen the stress these undocumented workers live under and I would strongly recommend against it."

Given the scale and complexity of the domestic and foreign policy crises Obama is currently grappling with, comprehensive immigration reform is not something the US president is likely to tackle any time soon. During the meeting with Cowen, he noted it was something he "would like to get around to", but the truth is that nobody within his own party wants him to grapple with such a potentially explosive issue in his first term. Even assuming he secures a second term, any attempt to tackle this problem is unlikely to come much before 2014.

Despite the pledges to a solution from lobbying groups and various Irish leaders over the past five years, the reality is that since the 2007 McCain-Kennedy immigration bill went down in flames, there has been no appetite in Congress for revisiting this most polarising of domestic issues. And there is even less appetite for cutting any special deal for Ireland on this issue. Even staunch Irish-American advocates such as Congressman Peter King are fiercely opposed to any amnesty or retrospective legalisation for any group of illegal immigrants.

For years there has been a mounting exasperation in Congress about this issue. Sympathy for the plight of those who left Ireland in the 1980s and '90s because of a flatlining economy and political unrest has been largely replaced with the belief that immigration for the Irish is now a lifestyle choice rather than a necessity.