The North's Executive is to gain significant new powers to raise some £3 billion for investment in ailing public services and crumbling infrastructure. A new Strategic Investment Agency is also to be created, and valuable property occupied by prisons and British military bases will be sold for residential and economic development.
The H-blocks at the Maze Prison will be demolished, and it is expected that the former Crumlin Road prison in north Belfast and Ebrington Barracks in Derry will be sold to raise yet more money.
The initiative, which has been months in the making, was negotiated by the First and Deputy First Ministers and Downing Street and will be formally announced at a ceremony in Belfast tomorrow. Mr Tony Blair and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, are to attend. Mr Brown is also expected to announce some £200 million in short-term extra spending.
The new fund-raising powers are unique among the devolved administrations in the North, Wales and Scotland.
Political sources across the spectrum at Stormont hope that the new powers to enable the raising of investment funds will enhance the political standing of the Executive, lend it new gravitas and enhance greater co-operation between Ministers.
However, it was flatly denied that the initiative was in any way linked to the recent sense of crisis surrounding the peace process and the new institutions in Belfast. Mr David Trimble and Mr Mark Durkan have been working steadily alongside officials in their Department for a package of measures which will address the North's health, public services and infrastructural needs, linked to a "peace dividend".
The idea of such a dividend and a "normalisation agenda" for Northern Ireland arose during the Weston Park talks last summer between the two governments and the Northern parties.
Mr Durkan has referred to the need for borrowing powers and for vacated military and prison sites to be made available to the Executive since becoming Deputy First Minister last November. He has returned to the subject in subsequent meetings with Mr Blair and in speeches delivered in the US in February and in Ireland, North and South, since then.
The closure of Ebrington Barracks in Derry was announced earlier this year as part of the demilitarisation process which is currently under way. Such facilities are normally offered for sale to other state bodies or sold into the private sector. The disposal of the barracks in this manner and the demolition of the H-blocks which held the prisoners on hunger-strike in 1981 will be highly significant politically.
The Maze Prison, just outside Belfast, is located close to the M1 and is thought to be worth some tens of millions of pounds. The conversion of military and prison sites to residential and economic use will be cited as indicative of the new political dispensation.
The Executive, now that it will be empowered to borrow for infrastructural purposes, will also need to look at new repayment methods, which could prove unpopular.
The principal source of revenue is through the levying of business and domestic rates. In Northern Ireland the latter are significantly below those struck in Britain. The average domestic rates bill in the North is about £400 a year, half the amount levied in Wales and more than £500 below the English average.
Sources indicate that these will have to rise significantly if the necessary investment is to take place.