Last May, after Sinn Féin emerged from the Stormont Assembly elections as Northern Ireland’s largest party, in a column for The Currency I suggested that Micheál Martin would take the Foreign Affairs portfolio when Leo Varadkar replaced him as Taoiseach. The prediction was based on the view that it would be inconceivable for Fianna Fáil, the republican party, to surrender the two main channels of Dublin-Belfast and Dublin-London engagement to Fine Gael.  So it came to pass that Micheál Martin returned to the Department and the Iveagh House office where he served (and was popular) from May 2008 until January…

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