It’s been announced that the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, has invited Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to visit Ireland. The trip, the first by a British monarch since the 26 southern counties won independence from British rule, is likely to take place next year before President Mary McAleese stands down as President.

It’s a positive sign of just how far relations have come between Ireland and Britain in recent decades and it is right that Britain’s Head of State should visit Ireland.

Despite the recent warming in relations there is still a lot of unfinished business between Britain and Ireland. Business that Queen Elizabeth II can go a log way to healing. Britain’s Queen has, for example, served as Colonel-in-Chief of the British army for decades during which her troops murdered innocent Irish Catholics. It took 38 years for the families of Derry’s Bloody Sunday to receive an apology from Britain’s Prime Minister after their relatives were murdered in 1972. Will Queen Elizabeth have the graciousness to apologise for the actions of her troops in Ireland? Will she acknowledge that for hundreds of years successive British governments visited the most appalling persecution upon the people of Ireland?

It is right that Britain’s Queen should visit Ireland, and she should receive a gracious reception. We should not, however, paper over historic hurts. As the poet Maya Angelou wrote: “history despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlives, but, if faced with courage, need not be lived again”.

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