It could probably only happen in an Ireland in the midst of a crisis-plagued peace process that a statement of the obvious, of the sort made by Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern yesterday (Thursday) about Gerry Adams' membership of the IRA, could generate such a fuss.
For people living through the Troubles in the North, and especially for those whose job it has been to track and closely follow Gerry Adams' career, his links with the IRA, at the highest levels, have been taken so much for granted that to even put a question mark against them risks hilarity and scorn.
But the fact that Mr Ahern's statement that he always assumed that Mr Adams was an IRA member has been treated as such a ground-breaking comment is also a measure of how far "acceptable falsehoods" have become the normal discourse of the peace process - and perhaps a signal that the time has come to change all that.
The Sinn Féin president has himself consistently denied any association with the IRA and when asked to explain how he steered the IRA to a ceasefire and the peace process, he has repeatedly described how he and others would "go to the IRA" and persuade them of this or that move.
This conjured up the rather touching picture of Gerry Adams, cap nervously twisting in his hands, knocking on a stout wooden door and a rough voice answering: "What is it now, Gerry!!?". The door would open to reveal the Army Council, seven tough-looking men in balaclavas sitting at a table and Gerry, swallowing his fear, would sally forth to win them to peace with sweet words and his charming ways.
We were asked, in other words, to accept that someone who was never in the IRA, had never lain in a ditch or fired a shot in anger for Ireland was able to persuade an organisation, whose members traditionally distrusted outsiders and respected only their own, to execute the most ambitious ideological U-turn in the history of the IRA, one that culminated in the de facto recognition of partition.
It was of course nonsense, as the Taoseach recognised yesterday when he referred to Adams' prominence during negotiations, but the body politic in Ireland, and the bulk of the media, rarely challenged it, presumably on the grounds that if this was the price to be paid for ending the IRA's war, then so be it.
The truth of Gerry Adams' association with the IRA is not just that he was or is a member but that he has so dominated the organisation for such a long time now that nothing happens, least of all the creation and management of the peace process, without his nod of approval.
His membership began in the mid-1960's when he joined the IRA's youth wing, the Fianna and then when he graduated to the adult wing, he joined 'D' Company of Belfast Brigade. In those days the IRA was largely moribund but that changed with the civil rights movement and the split in the IRA in the late 1960's. Gerry Adams hesitated before taking sides but in 1970, as the violence worsened, he joined the Provisionals, a sympathy shared by most of his family. At first Adams commanded 'B' Company of the new Provisional IRA's Second Belfast battalion based in the Ballymurphy area where he and his family had lived since he was a youngster.
The Provisional IRA in Belfast in those days was led by an older and more conservative generation of men and figures like Adams, who had a grammar school education and a flair for tactical innovation, stood out and were promoted rapidly. Adams was soon on the staff of the Second Battalion, became its commanding officer and by 1971 he was on the staff of Belfast Brigade.
His influence, through family connections, over former Belfast commanders such as Joe Cahill and Seamus Twomey meant that when they moved to the IRA's national leadership - both became Chiefs of Staff - Adams exerted pull at the organisation's highest levels very early on.
His stature as a military tactician and political strategist was such that when the IRA called a brief ceasefire in 1972, the IRA's precondition that he be released from internment to join the IRA's delegation was granted by the British. He travelled to London along with Martin McGuinness, Ivor Bell and Chief of Staff Sean MacStiofain for talks with the then NI Secretary Willie Whitelaw but he was known to oppose that ceasefire which broke down after a fortnight or so.
During Adams' tenure in the leadership of the Belfast IRA, the organisation was famous for its military innovations. The Armalite became a standard IRA weapon during his watch as did the car bomb, a legacy that still reverberates around the world. Adams developed a name in the IRA for counter-intelligence operations - rather like that other IRA spymaster, Michael Collins, he revelled in his nickname 'The Big Lad' - and set up a special unit called 'the unknowns' which was responsible for disappearing unfortunates like Jean McConville.
In 1973 he was interned and twice tried unsuccessfully to escape from jail. On his release from jail in 1977 he was immediately catapulted into the IRA national leadership, joined the ruling Army Council and became Adjutant-General, or deputy Chief of Staff. He has been on the Army Council ever since, once serving briefly, between December 1977 and February 1978, as Chief of Staff.
Once he was in a leadership position, Adams set about re-organising the IRA into more secret and secure cells, approved the lucrative alliance with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi and began pushing the IRA in a more political direction. In the process he and his allies, by now including figures like Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and Danny Morrison, took on the IRA's old guard led by Daithi O Conaill and Ruairi O Bradaigh, eventually isolating or pushing them out. They first captured the IRA Army Council and then moved on to Sinn Féin, an admission by Adams and his allies of where the real power lay in the organisation.
The 1981 hunger strikes gave Adams the opportunity to manoeuvre the IRA and Sinn Féin towards electoral politics, at the same time beginning a very secret dialogue with the Catholic Church that ultimately produced the peace process and the IRA ceasefires of 1994 and 1997.
The rest, as they say, is history but it is clear to anyone with any knowledge of the IRA and Sinn Féin during this time that if Gerry Adams had not been a member or a leader of the IRA with the sort of track record he had, the Army Council would have kept its door firmly shut against him.
