Perhaps. But I’ll make the point that every single Republican has died with that failure and it will likely will not change given current demographics.
Overall the negotiation and constitutional approach to Irish independence has proven to be the winner, over and over again.
A few other things have come to mind when Bruton was made Taoiseach:
He walked out onto the steps of Government Buildings with Spring and De Rossa and got their synced stop wrong which meant Bruton was on a lower step to the others. Bruton tried to rectify it by stepping back up at the same time as the other two stepped down! It was great craic watching it.
He made some comment (off mic but was on mic) about being happy that Charlie Bird wasn’t around as he wouldn’t be asked about ‘The fucking peace process!!’
How so? The country was partitioned on the back of negotiation… Tho you can rightly argue that die had already been cast.
The fact is the threat of violence won on both sides during 1914-22 period, both in the north and south, and the partition of the country only pushed that inevitable violence down the road. Negotiate has achieved very little, it was violence that has nearly always won. Hopefully, those days are long gone.