This year, as she has done on more than 50 previous occasions, the Queen will present the gift of Maundy purses to a select band of her subjects. This time, however, the event will take place at St Patrick's Church of Ireland Cathedral in Armagh, Northern Ireland, and occurs at the end of a three-day visit to the Province. For much of her reign such an event would have been unimaginably impractical. There were times in the 1970s and 1980s when security considerations meant that the monarch scarcely came to Ulster at all, and when she did it was but for a few hours. There have been, inevitably, some precautions to ensure her protection on this trip, yet on the whole what has been striking about it has been the relaxed atmosphere and that her presence has not aggrieved nationalists. The welcome has been warm across both communities.

The peace process was so protracted that the ultimate restoration of devolution and the agreement reached between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein has not been recognised for the extraordinary achievement that it really is. The original Good Friday agreement is almost a decade old and the first anniversary of the pact between the Rev Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams will take place on Wednesday. While the forthcoming retirement of the DUP leader as First Minister is perhaps unfortunately premature and will not make the transfer of policing and justice functions any easier, few believe that either the Unionist hierarchy or their Sinn Fein counterparts have any option or plan bar continued co-operation. With every day that passes, the existence of this unlikely alliance inside the Executive reinforces a normalisation of Northern Ireland.

The last part of that process has to involve the final symbol in the reconciliation of this country with the Republic of Ireland. No British monarch has been seen south of the border since what was first the Irish Free State and then Eire acquired its independence. For most of its history, it would have been as inconceivable for the Republic to aspire to host the Queen as it would have been for her to be in Armagh Cathedral on Maundy Thursday. It would do much not only to demonstrate publicly the close relations between London and Dublin today but to reassure some Unionists who still have their doubts about devolution for the Queen to be invited to Ireland and receive, as she would, an enthusiastic reception from politicians and public alike. It is surreal that a woman who has been virtually everywhere else in the world has not set foot in the Republic.

Mary McAleese, the Irish President, held her fifth meeting with the Queen at Queen's University in Belfast yesterday and said afterwards that the moment of a visit was “significantly closer”. Dates should be set sooner rather than later. The current position of the Irish Government, that it would be a mistake for a trip to occur until devolution is completed with the change in judicial and policing authority, strikes many in Northern Ireland as needlessly churlish. It would indeed be desirable for Ulster to determine such arrangements locally but this is a complex issue and it does not help for a royal trip to be seen to be contingent on a result over a specified timetable. Announcing now that the Queen will be in Ireland next year would be a vote of confidence in the outcome of these negotiations. She should be seen in Dublin before Maundy Thursday 2009.