Unionists should be cultivating relations with Micheál Martin

It is not hard to understand the temptation not to bother.

Still, some 50 years after the Troubles began, there is an astonishing groupthink among leading Dublin politicians.

Mary Robinson aside, there was barely a voice against the injustice of the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement being imposed on one community when great emphasis was always being placed on consulting and respecting the other community.

More recently, there was a near unanimity in favour of the various iterations of the Brexit backstop, and then the Boris Johnson deal — or any outcome that divided the UK rather than introducing any change at the land border.

And all the while, a sense of northern nationalists as victims and unionists as culprits somehow still seems to prevail in the Irish establishment.

Yet even so there have been some Irish political leaders who have been scathing about republicans.

John Bruton was one of them, but he never seemed to get much credit from unionism.

Fine Gael generally was more outspoken about Sinn Fein. It has been all the more dismaying therefore to watch Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney adopt such a ‘green’ approach to Northern Ireland politics, particularly when the Republic itself has become more cosmopolitan. They criticise SF in the Dail, but never the party’s disgraceful conduct in Northern Ireland.

Micheál Martin, the leader of Fianna Fail, on the other hand has been relentlessly critical of SF.

Now he has made clear his view that the party’s plans for a border poll risk inflaming tensions in Northern Ireland.

Mr Martin is never going to have the same world view as a unionist, yet he is the sort of politician unionists must cultivate, to show that they are open to excellent relations with Dublin, despite the frustration with the current government.