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Were Republicans, as the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, claimed, responsible for the collapse of the Executive? Cosgrave’s charge was that the campaign of the IRA ‘has sparked a massive sectarian backlash’ (White, 2006 : 215). In response the President of Provisional Sinn Féin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, claimed that Cosgrave was looking for a scapegoat for his government’s failure to address the ‘real cause’ of the violence in Northern Ireland: partition and the British presence (Ibid.). In fact Cosgrave’s blaming of Republicans was at odds with the negotiating position which his government had adopted both during and after the Sunningdale conference. The

In Ancestral Voices, Conor Cruise O'Brien reflects the rose-tinted terms in which this period is viewed by arguing that 'political leaders in the Republic seriously sought accommodation with unionist leaders, and were prepared, and equipped to resist the Catholic-nationalist territorial drive'. The two figures at the centre of this potentially historic shift were Sean Lemass, who had succeeded De Valera as leader of Fianna Fail and Taoiseach in 1959, and Terence O'Neill, who replaced Lord Brookeborough as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1963. Challenges this view of the period, focusing on Lemass's contradictory approach to the north, which had its roots in material conditions in the southern state. Newspapers, periodicals and government archives reveal Lemass's ambiguous stance on the north and partition. That which was generous and conciliatory in his discourse did provoke a positive response in the north and from the British government, but he also periodically articulated an anti-partitionism which would have please De Valera at his most militant. (Quotes from original text)