The Real Irish Republic and The Rhetorical Irish Republic

Since the Provisional Army Council remains undisbanded, it presumably still claims to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, in succession to the purely rhetorical 32-County Republic of 1916. Therefore, regardless of any other factor whatever, how can any Irish party or politician consider, even for one moment, coalition or co-operation with Sinn Fein, which accepts and propagates that claim to sovereignty, and several of the leading members of which are in fact members of the Provisional Army Council?

It seems that, just as working-class Nationalist areas of Northern Ireland have been handed over to those who adhere to this monstrous claim to sovereignty so that they might govern them as if that claim were in fact correct (with Loyalist areas similarly handed over other terrorist organisations, although it is not clear on what, even theoretical, basis), so the parts of the Republic, and especially of Dublin and its environs, left behind by the recent, rather ill-founded economic boom are likewise to be handed over.

But, as in Northern Ireland, it is the real, legally and democratically legitimate, state that is to pay the bills, the bills for denying the entitlements of citizenship to those of its citizens who happen to be working-class.