The results of the Assembly election marked a "watershed", the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, said. At a news conference in Stormont at the weekend, she announced a range of measures provided for in the Belfast Agreement, including a review of the criminal justice system.
"I'm very pleased that the results mean we're going to have an Assembly that will work. This is another vital step towards genuine peace and political stability in Northern Ireland. Following the agreement and the referendum, the people have spoken again. They have voted now overwhelmingly for parties that support the agreement; 75 per cent of seats are for parties which are pro-agreement."
Dr Mowlam continued: "I very much hope that when it meets for the first time on Wednesday, the Assembly will elect First and Deputy First Ministers to steer the next phase of preparations in consultation with the other parties.
"After that, the next steps will be to define the portfolios of ministers in the new executive and appoint an executive committee. You will have already worked out by the d'Hondt system who the top 10 potential ministers are, so it won't be difficult to distinguish who the potential executive committee members are.
"Over the summer we would expect to see the departments and portfolios identified, so that the executive can be appointed soon after and shadow ministers can begin to develop a programme for government and can take part in discussions with the Irish Government about North-South co-operation. Under the agreement, areas for further North-South co-operation are to be identified and agreed in the shadow North-South Ministerial Council by the end of October.
"Assembly members will also play a part in the British-Irish Council, the third of the new institutions created by the agreement."
She pointed out that, under the terms of the agreement, these institutions were all interlocking: "That's what the effort will be, to move them all forward together during the next couple of months, along with others such as the Civic Forum.
"We plan, before long, to introduce a major Bill in Parliament, to implement the provisions of the agreement, including the transfer of powers to the new Assembly. I expect this to complete its passage sufficiently quickly for the transfer of power to take place early next year." Tomorrow the British and Irish governments would sign the orders to bring schemes to facilitate the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons into force by the end of June, in accordance with the terms of the agreement. In parallel with the work of the Patten Commission on policing, there would be a wide-ranging British government-led review of criminal justice.
"This is now ready to begin, and will report to me no later than autumn 1999," Dr Mowlam said. It would be taken forward by a team of officials from the Northern Ireland Office, led by the NIO's Director of Criminal Justice, Mr Jim Daniell, and would include representatives of the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General.
This team would be assisted by an expert group of independent assessors including: Mr Eugene Grant QC, a Northern Ireland barrister in criminal practice; Prof John Jackson, head of the law school at Queen's University Belfast; Prof Joanna Shapland, professor of criminal justice at Sheffield University; Dr Bill Lockhart, director of the Extern Organisation, working with released offenders; and Mr John Gower, a recently-retired English judge.
Asked when the shadow executive would hold its first meeting, the North's Minister for Political Development, Mr Paul Murphy, said: "The only date in the agreement, of course, is October 31st because that refers to the North-South Ministerial Council." Dr Mowlam said that for the transitional period a "programme of seminars and workshops" had been instituted to help newly-elected politicians and the civil servants "get to grips with the practicalities of working together in government".
She concluded: "Today marks a watershed in the history of Northern Ireland. A whole generation of politicians have missed out on the chance to exercise real power. Today changes that."