ON FRIDAY NIGHT Dolores McNamara, a mother of six from Limerick, discovered that she had won £77 million in the European lottery. About 30 hours earlier two Irishmen from further north, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, had reason to believe that in another context — that of the the peace process — they would be hitting a political jackpot.

The Euromillions draw came after nine rollovers. Northern Ireland has had a similar experience since the Good Friday Agreement, culminating in the dramatic announcement last Thursday that the IRA would cease all military activity. Does this mean that the lives of Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness are now likely to be transformed, as no doubt they hope? Unfortunately a study of the past form of lottery winners is not encouraging. And while I wish the McNamara family nothing but good fortune, I suspect the two republican leaders might not fare so well.

At almost any other time the IRA statement would have dominated the news agenda for weeks. In the present atmosphere, however, it has been treated almost as an historical afterthought, not a development with profound significance. In so far as its implications have been considered at all, it has been along the lines of “Do they (the IRA) mean it?” The real question should be: “What does it mean?” The “Do they mean it?” question is straightforward.

This is not, unlike other IRA offers to “place beyond arms beyond use”, a declaration that is reversible. After this the IRA can hardly at some future time issue a video of its public face, Sean Walsh, instructing volunteers to “retrieve guns” that have been dumped or engage in activities that would be “incompatible with peaceful, democratic methods”. Nor would there be any point in the IRA making this move if the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning and the Independent Monitoring Commission could not assign it a clean bill of health afterwards. To the irritation of some Unionists, perhaps, the IRA will almost certainly deliver on its word.

It will do so because the relationship between Sinn Fein and the IRA has changed fundamentally. Sinn Fein was once the political wing of the IRA; in the course of the past decade, the IRA has become the paramilitary branch of Sinn Fein. A paramilitary organisation can choose whether or not it has a political manifestation. A political organisation in a Western democracy cannot, ultimately, choose whether or not it has a paramilitary offshoot. Much of the painful rollercoaster that Northern Ireland has endured since the Good Friday Agreement has been about republicans testing how much of the IRA they could keep intact while still persuading London, Dublin, Washington and a portion of Unionists to do business with them. That process has now been settled on terms that a large enough number of people can accept.

“What does it mean?” is far more challenging. It will take time to be confident of an answer. Sinn Fein is now destined to be as much a paradoxical as a political organisation, combining electoral success with ideological failure.

The bonus at the ballot box for Sinn Fein is obvious. It outperformed the SDLP in the general election despite the damning publicity that came from the murder of Robert McCartney and the Northern Bank robbery. It will do even better once it can campaign without the stigma of the balaclava.

It is the only authentic working- class nationalist political party in the Province (not least because the IRA kneecapped — or worse — anyone attempting to build up an alternative) and it will romp home once IRA disarmament renders it fully “respectable”. Sinn Fein will decommission the SDLP even faster than General John de Chastelain and his team can dismantle the IRA’s arsenal. That success will be duplicated south of the border as well. It would be astonishing now if Sinn Fein did not win one vote in ten at the next election in the Republic — a result that would leave it knocking at the door of office.

That voting strength will leave Sinn Fein, politically, in a win-win situation. If the Democratic Unionist Party agrees to enter government with it in the north, then men such as Mr McGuinness and his like will be ministers again with departmental fiefdoms. If, on the other hand, the Unionists will not share power even after the IRA has wound down, there will be a Secretary of State in Ulster in effect implementing Sinn Fein’s positions on “equality and justice” and “ demilitarisation”.

But therein in lies the rub. The more effective that Sinn Fein is as an electoral force, the more impotent it becomes as an ideological one. Every deal it strikes with Tony Blair legitimises the British presence in Northern Ireland. Every concession it secures that advances the economic and social standing of ordinary Roman Catholics in Ulster weakens the argument that it is only through Irish unification that those material interests can be realised. With every step that Ulster takes towards becoming a “normal society”, so what Sinn Fein officially regards as an “interim settlement” becomes more deeply entrenched.

This is the outlook for republicanism. A larger and larger number of nationalists in both the North and the South will vote for Sinn Fein — but more because they regard it as the best vehicle for representing them in a divided Ireland than out of support for a united one. Nor will it make much difference if Catholics finally outbreed Protestants in Ulster. Even at the height of the Troubles a substantial percentage of nationalists preferred the status quo to the upheaval of unification.

That sentiment will only swell if politics is perceived to be working in Northern Ireland. One winner of the national lottery in Britain recently mused sadly that: “I have never been richer and I have never been poorer.” That is also the irony that awaits Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness.

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone