They all had such dreams of it, the centenary of the Easter Rising, but it has become nothing but an embarrassment to the leaders of Ireland’s political parties. When revolutionary leader Patrick Pearse stood in front of Dublin’s General Post Office in 1916 and declared “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible” he could hardly have imagined that 100 years later, none of the parties elected by the people to the 32nd Irish Dail appear able or even willing to govern the Republic for which he and the other leaders of the Rising were prepared to sacrifice their lives.

The 'Brits' are out, as the saying goes, but so too, for the moment, are the Irish. When the dignitaries assemble with President Higgins on Easter Sunday 2016, it is highly unlikely there will be a government.

True, as the counts were completed and seats declared in halls and arenas around the country last week, boyos were hoisted onto the shoulders of their faithful to whoops and punchings of the air of the traditional kind – but now that is has come to talk of forming a government, an awkward reluctance has become apparent.

The election was a disaster for the government, which was decisively defeated by a people angry after years of austerity and broken promises. No party won an overall majority, and the only coalition that looks realistic is between the two parties which fought a bitter Civil War within years of the failed Rising - Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. The fact that no one else can now tell the difference between them is neither here nor there. Among the stalwarts, the fierceness of old allegiance remains, the memory of brothers, long dead now, who fought on opposite sides, and thereafter never spoke again. Both parties, while not ruling it out, look and sound miserable at the prospect of putting the past behind them to share power.

Last week the outgoing Taoiseach, Enda Kenny of Fine Gael, apparently too shattered to care, launched the state’s magnificent Proclaiming A Republic exhibition at the National Museum. He trudged haplessly around, gifting press photographers and headline writers by slumping on a railing in front of lines from Edinburgh born socialist James Connolly who told the Citizens Army in advance of the Rising, “We are going out to be slaughtered. Is there no chance of success? None whatever.” The junior partner in the defeated coalition, Connolly’s Labour party, was decimated at the polls.

Sinn Fein had boasted, pre-election, of its ambition to see party its president Gerry Adams elected Taoiseach for the Centenary, but it was not to be. It gained seats but had hoped, and needed, to do better. Now it is eagerly pushing the parties it has accused of behaving like British Tories into joining forces to form a government. The rationale is obvious. As an opposition party, Sinn Fein can continue to grow, fuelled by discontents that are unlikely to go away any time soon. It will not have to risk taking unpopular decisions in the event that the economy continues to limp.

The only all island party, Sinn Fein is also the only party which is still serious about the notion of a United Ireland. The election in the Republic out of the way, there are elections to the assembly at Stormont in Belfast to be fought in May. Last year, the party battled to stop the NI Executive from having to impose the whole raft of Tory cuts to public services and welfare benefits – not least so that it could not be said of it in the Republic that it opposed right wing policies south of the border while implementing them in the North. It can still claim fidelity to the Proclamation’s “cherishing all the children of the nation equally” ideal, whereas the parties that have already governed are mocked by rising homelessness, strikes, overcrowded hospitals, and persistent poverty.

Sinn Fein is routinely denounced as morally repugnant by the other mainstream parties in the Republic. Brutal incidents from the Troubles are cast up. Victims whose families suffered at the hands of the IRA are opportunistically made much of to show that the “armed struggle” which Sinn Fein supported bears no relation to the noble tradition within which the forebears of the other parties fought for Irish freedom.

The fact that the Proclamation of the Republic asserts the right to take up arms is ignored. It is as if no innocents were betrayed, no heads blown off, nor bodies riddled with bullets during the War of Independence that followed the Rising.

Northerners of every political ilk look on bemused. The border has produced a time warp. It is 18 years since the Good Friday Agreement saw the release of paramilitary prisoners who carried out atrocities. The new First Minister and Democratic Unionist leader, Arlene Foster, unflinchingly shares power with Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, though he was formerly an IRA leader and the IRA almost killed both her father and herself in separate incidents.

The Taoiseach and his now caretaker government have other humiliations to endure before they get to Easter. There is the global knees up that is Saint Patrick’s Day to be got through. Ministers who lost their seats have been instructed to cancel their flights to celebrations abroad. Kenny will himself, however, will have to go through the pantomime of inflicting the annual pot of shamrock on President Obama.