She also distributed alms purses – part of an ancient ceremony recognising service to church and community – at the Royal Maundy Thursday Service held for the first time outside the mainland, in Armagh.

She marked the four hundredth anniversary of the Province's Royal Schools and met hundreds of members of the Territorial Army at Hillsborough celebrating that organisation's centenary.

Shaun Woodward said the visit was "an enormously significant and historic occasion for everyone".

While republican leaders continue the same old rhetoric about a united Ireland being just around the corner, when faced as they were last week with our reinforced constitutional reality, it would be difficult for nationalists to find anything to indicate their politicians had made any progress on their united Ireland aspirations.

It was unfortunate that the one sour note of the trip was the ill-judged comment from the Irish President, suggesting a visit by the Queen to Dublin should be vetoed until policing and justice powers were devolved.

This marred an otherwise very positive visit and was far from the first time Mary McAleese has invited controversy about her views on Northern Ireland.

She has demonstrated previously a profound insensitivity to unionists. She was forced to cancel a visit to Belfast four years ago after suggesting Protestant children in the province were taught to hate Roman Catholics in the same way Nazis learned to despise Jews.

Sadly, she put her foot in her mouth again. If she set out deliberately to antagonise unionists, she couldn't have done it much better.

Her comments also caused embarrassment to many people in the Irish Republic. She appeared to miss the irony of her wishing to place conditions on a visit by our head of state while she remains keen to flit in and out of this country at the drop of a hat. She rarely appears to be out of Northern Ireland.

Quite what the logic would be of Dublin making the visit of a neighbouring head of state dependent on the devolution of policing powers to the Assembly is baffling.

Imagine the prospect of long-fingering receiving another international leader on the basis of an entirely appropriate position held on one issue by a political party in a small region of their country.
Few residents of the Republic care much about the politics of Northern Ireland anymore.

They are certainly not being kept awake at night wondering where responsibility lies for policing and justice in the Province.

How she could have imagined a comment like that coming from her would have served to hasten the transfer of functions is mystifying.
Unionists currently have little interest in these extra powers and convincing them will be a difficult job.

It's certainly not going to be enhanced by Mary McAleese indicating they should be forced to have them straight away.

An editorial in the Times last week referred to a Royal visit to Dublin: "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.

"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."

The DUP has made it clear that the people of Northern Ireland should not have policing and justice powers foisted upon them.

There must be broad willingness in the community for such change.
Another key consideration of course will be whether sufficient resources would accompany any devolution of these responsibilities. The budget allocated for policing for the incoming year in the Province would not be an encouraging indicator.

Certainly, no one is going to sign up to new responsibilities at any time without the appropriate resources being guaranteed to allow us to do a good job.

Part of the reason behind Sinn Fein's hysteria on this issue of course is because they have oversold to their grassroots something they were never in a position to deliver.

I see in his Easter message, the Secretary of State unwisely stated he is hopeful of policing and justice being devolved later this year. I would have thought he might have learnt his lesson after initially aggressively indicating on his return to the NIO that he expected transfer by May.

It is the DUP who will decide when the appropriate time is for the Northern Ireland Assembly to take on this extra responsibility. We secured that control in legislation and we will not be giving it up.

No matter how much Sinn Fein, Mary McAleese or anyone else dislikes the present position, we negotiated a triple lock and it will remain in place until we are satisfied the time is right.