BERTIE AHERN,' the Irish prime minister, resigned this week after 11 years in office, his power having ebbed through over-familiarity and scandal. But there was little notice of that in Washington, Cambridge, or Boston last week, where Ahern addressed Congress and gatherings at Harvard, the Boston College Club, and the John F. Kennedy Library with the gravitas of a statesman. ''After so many decades of conflict, I am so proud, Madam Speaker, to be the first Irish leader to inform the United States Congress: Ireland is at peace,'' he said, a sentence typical of his rhetoric.
The tone of Ahern's farewell tour was all the more impressive because of his background as a member of the Dail (the Irish parliament) from the hardscrabble north side of Dublin. He surprised many people with his commitment to the peace process and his grasp of its essence - to create positive relationships among politicians accustomed to talking past each other.
He and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, will be remembered for steering the Northern Irish peace process past deadlocks and false starts to a successful conclusion last year. In his own country, he presided over the culmination of a 20-year economic boom that transformed the Republic of Ireland from one of the poorest nations in Western Europe.
Ahern benefited from the spadework of thousands of people, both in bringing peace to the North and transforming the economy of the republic. Few people outside Ireland would have thought these changes possible in 1977, when he entered the Dail. The ability of the Irish people to change offers hope that societies either stagnant or convulsed by violence can remake themselves.
Americans had much to do with the boom. US companies invested in the republic, attracted by a low tax rate, skilled workforce, common language, membership in the European Union, and - for many American businesspeople - the familiarity of shared ancestry. Ahern acknowledged the American role in his speech to Congress.
''In Ireland, we firmly believe our experience of hardship and of forced emigration is at an end,'' he said. ''For that achievement ..... we owe so much to America.''
He didn't use the word ''globalization,'' but critics of this phenomenon should take note of Ireland and the benefits of an economy open to the rest of the world.
The republic was fortunate that except for a few bombings in the 1970s, the violence in the north did not seep south. The Irish constitution, however, insisted that the island was one nation, implying that Northern Ireland was illegitimate. When Ahern took office in 1997, he made peace in the north his top priority and kept the pressure on the Irish Republican Army to stop their war.
The contending parties reached an agreement that was ratified by voters north and south 10 years ago this month, and the republic removed the one-nation clause from the constitution. Protestants of the north could be confident that no Irish government would pressure them to join the republic. And Ahern developed a friendship with the hard-liner Ian Paisley, who became the leading Protestant political figure.
The United States, under Bill Clinton's leadership, played an effective mediation role, one that was continued by the Bush administration, an example of the benefits of nonviolent American influence. Prominent Irish-Americans did their parts as well, as acknowledged by Ahern in Boston.
''You stuck with us all the way from the late-'60s,'' he said of Senator Edward Kennedy, who has often used his influence to bridge the sectarian divisions. Ahern presented the library with a $2 million gift from the republic, a fitting acknowledgment of the lift that John F. Kennedy's visit gave to Irish self-esteem in 1963.
Ahern also announced that the Irish government was trying to apply the lessons learned in resolving the northern conflict to other world trouble spots. The first candidate for peaceful intervention is Timor-Leste, at the fringe of Southeast Asia.
On his last day in office Tuesday, Ahern and Paisley dedicated a visitors center at the site of the Battle of the Boyne, which sealed English domination of Ireland in 1690. The Irish conflict once seemed as intractable as any in the world. The Irish solved it by mutual concessions, persistent negotiation, refusal to give in to momentary setbacks, and a willingness to let friendly outsiders help. That's a good template for others to follow.
Ahern is being investigated by a special tribunal looking into corrupt money that found its way into the Irish political system as the economy boomed in the early 1990s. The panel will try to determine whether Ahern took payoffs as he struggled with financial difficulties caused by separation from his wife. He denies any wrongdoing.
However that turns out, the Ahern years will be remembered as the time Ireland got rich and found peace.
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