The deal on policing devolution agreed by Sinn Féin and the DUP is set to propel the Alliance Party on to Northern Ireland’s political centre stage as the holder of the new justice ministry.
The complicated working out of the agreement will see the Assembly’s fifth largest party - and one that currently does not even have a seat in the power-sharing Cabinet - fill arguably its most significant post.
The reason for this peculiarity is founded in the deep suspicion that republicans and unionists still harbour for each other.
That mutual distrust forced both the DUP and Sinn Féin to agree, in November 2008, not to nominate a candidate from within their own ranks for the portfolio.
Instead they decided the position should be filled by someone who could command cross-community support.
Effectively ruling out the two other minor partners in the Executive - the Ulster Unionists and SDLP - that precondition opened the way for the unaffiliated Alliance Party to step forward.
Attached to neither orange nor green, it will probably be charged with navigating the fledgling ministry through the undoubted storms ahead.
The man likely to take the helm is Alliance leader David Ford, although deputy leader and current Belfast mayor Naomi Long or economy spokesman Stephen Farry could yet emerge as a surprise choice.
Mr Ford, a 58-year-old married father of four from Antrim, has established himself as an effective operator in the Assembly.
Born and raised in England, he has done much to position Alliance as the unofficial opposition to the four-party mandatory coalition government. A member of the Assembly as a South Antrim representative since 1998, he is also a long-serving councillor in Antrim borough.
Educated at Dulwich College in London, he spent summer holidays on his uncle’s farm in Gortin, Co Tyrone. He moved to Northern Ireland permanently in 1969 when he went to study economics at Queen’s University, Belfast.
It was there he joined the newly-formed Alliance Party.
After university he spent a year working at the faith-based Corrymeela cross-community group in Ballycastle in Co Antrim. From there he began a career as a social worker.
A vociferous supporter of the Belfast Agreement, he became leader of the party in 2001, replacing Sean Neeson.
From the backbenches he has continually urged the Executive to take action to tackle segregation in Northern Ireland, claiming long-standing community divisions cost the local economy £1 billion each year.
PA