The Stormont Executive is poised to begin the most ambitious investment and reconstruction initiative since partition.
Money for the rebuilding of crumbling infrastructure and sub-standard public services will be financed courtesy of substantial and significant new powers granted to the Assembly. These will enable multi-billion pound loans to be raised, financed by significant rises in domestic and business rates.
The plan, detailed in Wednesday's Irish Times, was launched in Belfast yesterday by the Mr Tony Blair; Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Dr John Reid, the Northern Secretary; alongside the First Minister, Mr David Trimble; Deputy First Minister, Mr Mark Durkan; and the North's Finance Minister, Dr Seán Farren.
Mr Brown told an audience of Assembly members, ministers and journalists that in addition to the new powers, a strategic investment body would be set up, £200 million would be made available to kick-start investment plans, and former prisons and military bases would be transferred free to the Executive for transformation into business and residential resources.
The Prime Minister echoed Dr Reid's call in Westminster on Wednesday for the paramilitaries to end all activities. "The more this process goes on, the more important it is that there is no ambiguity about that," he said.
Citing the transfer of army bases and prisons to the Executive, Mr Blair emphasised the "swords into ploughshares" aspect of the investment initiative.
He repeatedly stressed his demand, concluding: "I think the time is coming very shortly where it has to be made absolutely clear that there is no half-way house. There is either total democratic commitment or there isn't."
Speaking later, Mr Trimble also referred to the transfer of military installations adding: "It looks as though some people think the war is over." He added pointedly: "Maybe others would get their heads around that and, more significantly, get to the point of saying that and acting on that."
The First Minister stressed that the investment plan had been months in the making and claimed the plan for a strategic investment body had since been copied by "some elements in the Republic". He insisted: "We thought of it first."
Mr Durkan, who is credited with the initiative, detailed the cost of 30 years of conflict and stressed that poor planning and the diversion of funds to security had to be added to the overall cost of violence. The proper response now, he said, was for the North's new institutions to rise to meet the economic challenges of the emerging peace.
Politicians must learn fast and learn together, he said. They must find out how best to achieve the 20 years of investment that was now needed.
The new finance-raising powers are scheduled to be in place in time for the spending round from 2003- 2006. These powers, added to the possibility that justice and police powers could be transferred next year, will mean that the Assembly and Executive elected next May will be significantly more powerful than any of its sister bodies in Edinburgh or Cardiff.
The transfer of former prisons and military bases, some of them worth tens of millions of pounds, will also be of political significance. The H-blocks at the Maze prison now face demolition as the site is diverted to commercial use. But, as one prominent minister told The Irish Times yesterday, there could be retention of some aspects of the notorious prison as a monument to the past.
All pro-Agreement parties are keen to show concrete gains flowing from the "normalisation dividend" well in advance of next May's elections.