On Friday last I sat with a former colleague from the Foreign Office who knows Ireland well, having reported on it back to King Charles Street over the decades. His comment on the recent passing of the same-sex referendum was telling: “Was it the same country?” He may well have asked the correct question as many on Twitter greeted the referendum result with the hashtag “#endofanera”.As we approach 2016 and the centenary of the Easter Rising, which kicked off the push for Irish independence, it is right to ask what form of republic is emerging in Ireland. This will broadly be determined by how it relates to religion – Catholicism in particular – as it was one of the key drivers of independence. Up to now, the Irish model of a republic did not robustly se