This article uses recently released archival material to examine the role of the Irish government in the negotiation of the Sunningdale communiqué of 1973, which marked, among other things, an agreement to establish a Council of Ireland and was therefore a key part of the first attempt to establish a power-sharing devolved executive in Northern Ireland. The article will problematise the distinctions which have been made between various strains of political thought held by leading intellectuals and politicians on the national question and show how the discourse of ‘revisionist nationalism’ and reconciliation which sponsored the key institution of the Sunningdale communiqué, the Council of Ireland, was in contradiction to the meaning attached to the functions of the Council, which was in fact closer to traditional nationalist aims.