The push for rapid political progress in advance of any potential crisis in the new year over weapons decommissioning will continue in London on Friday, following yesterday's successful inauguration of the new North-South Ministerial Council.
The Government is anxious to see maximum political activity in the new institutions over the next few months. This is an attempt to ensure that these new bodies will endure beyond the February deadline set by the Ulster Unionist Council for IRA weapons decommissioning.
Describing yesterday's first meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council as "the biggest thing that has happened in my political life", Mr Ahern insisted he was confident weapons decommissioning would take place. "We are not going to do all this and then go back," he said.
So the second of three key elements of the Belfast Agreement has come into force with the establishment of the council at Armagh yesterday.
With the power-sharing executive already in place, it only remains for the British-Irish Council to be set up; this body holds its inaugural meeting in London on Friday.
Twice before in this century unsuccessful attempts have been made to set up a body with a North-South political and administrative remit. A Council of Ireland was provided for in the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, but failed to come into operation because of unionist opposition. The idea was revived in the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement but never took effect.
The significance of the occasion yesterday was underlined by the fact that the full Cabinet from Dublin and 10 out of 12 ministers from the new Northern executive attended the inaugural plenary meeting at Palace Demesne, offices of the Armagh City and District Council. Twelve of the Dublin Ministers arrived in a convoy of cars; the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and the Minister for Foreign Affairs flew in by Air Corps helicopter.
"This is a day quite unlike any other," Mr Ahern told the assembled ministers from the two administrations. "For the first time elected ministers, drawn from both our great traditions, and from both parts of the island, are gathered together in one room, with a shared objective: to work for the common good of all the people." He said there was no area of economic and social life "without the potential for enhanced co-operation and common action".
The North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, said the new body was important to unionists as well as nationalists, although for different reasons. "The vast majority of unionists have always supported a mechanism that would facilitate co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but which did not seek to undermine our constitutional sovereignty."
The Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, said the council would be "a powerful body, co-ordinating and developing policies that meet the needs of people throughout the island of Ireland". He added: "It will allow us to tackle common issues from a new perspective and realise solutions, through co-operation, that before would have been unimaginable."
The Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Ms Harney, told the plenary session they stood "at the threshold of a new era" for the island and its economy. "At this turning-point in history, we have been given an opportunity denied to previous generations, an opportunity to work together to enhance the well-being of all of the people of this island."
However, the Rev Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party later condemned the new council and its associated cross-Border bodies as "an all-Ireland government in embryo".
The DUP members of the new executive, the Minister of Regional Development, Mr Peter Robinson, and the Minister of Social Development, Mr Nigel Dodds, boycotted the Armagh meeting.