The Taoiseach, accompanied by the majority of his Cabinet colleagues, will sit down in Armagh this morning at the inaugural meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council with the North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, and his ministerial colleagues. The two DUP members of the Executive are not due to attend.
The meeting, which is expected to last 11/2 hours, will approve the locations and interim heads of the six implementation bodies established under the Belfast Agreement, along with agreeing a work programme for areas of cross-Border co-operation.
The six areas covered by the implementation bodies are inland waterways; food safety; trade and business development; EU programmes; aquaculture and marine; and languages. Several areas on both sides of the Border are set to gain as the locations of the offices for the new bodies.
Eight places in the Republic have been selected as the base for either the headquarters or a sub-office of the bodies. Four of these locations - Carrick-on-Shannon, Monaghan, Carlingford and a site in east Donegal - are in Border counties. Two of the bodies will have offices in Dublin while the other locations in the Republic will be in Cork and Scarriff in Co Clare.
The headquarters of the inland waterways body will be located in Enniskillen, with three regional offices in the Republic, in Carrick-on-Shannon, Dublin and Scarriff. The EU programmes body will have its headquarters in Belfast, with sub-offices in Omagh and Monaghan.
The aquaculture and marine body will have its headquarters in Derry, with a sub-office located in the Carlingford area. All the offices attached to the trade and business development body will be located in Newry.
The headquarters of the food safety body will be located in Cork. The language body will have two headquarters. The Irish language division will be located in Dublin, with a sub-office in Belfast. The Ulster Scots/Ullans section will be based in Belfast, with a sub-office located in east Donegal.
Mr Ahern said today's meeting in Armagh - and the meeting of the British-Irish Council in London next Friday - were both "an enormous part of what we set out to achieve in the Good Friday agreement". The statement released last Friday by the International Commission on Decommissioning was "enormously helpful" for today's meeting.
The meeting would be "of huge significance to everyone on the island but to Northern nationalists it will be immensely important". He said he was more pleased about today's meeting than any other development since the start of the peace process.
"The formal ratifications and the ceremonial parts are all very nice but today is what it has all been about. This is now the reality, that we are in there dealing with real issues on an all-island basis."
The Taoiseach said the reason he "went the length and breadth of the country" during the referendum campaign on the Belfast Agreement was so that "we could in a different and more peaceful way start working on issues on an all-island basis".
A spokesman for the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said the meetings this week of the various institutions established by the Belfast Agreement were "the next big step" in the peace process.
In Helsinki at the weekend EU leaders applauded the progress made in Northern Ireland and at the conclusion of the European Council meeting said: "The council warmly welcomes devolution to Northern Ireland and the establishment of the British-Irish and North-South institutions under the Good Friday agreement, recognising that these developments represent very significant progress towards full implementation of the agreement."