The Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, is a far-sighted woman. A couple of months before the May 1997 election which brought the British Labour government into office, she was already thinking about the practical aftermath of a then almost inconceivable peace agreement and political accommodation in Northern Ireland.
At a conference at the Irish Institute in Boston College in Massachusetts, she suggested to its director, Mayo-born Dr Sean Rowland, that it might become involved in a support programme for the North's politicians in the event of agreement being reached.
Dr Rowland put it to his board, and the result is that Boston College will spend the bulk of a million dollars on just such a programme, running from now until the end of 1999. The plan was announced by Dr Mowlam in Boston this week.
The US programme is one of three components of an ambitious drive to have the 108 Assembly members who get down to work at Stormont next week properly prepared.
Since July 29th, the Northern Ireland Office has been running regular day-long seminars for Assembly members and the senior civil servants who will have to change the ingrained habits of more than 25 years of "direct rule" in order to work with them. Dr Mowlam originally wanted the politicians to start doing their homework at the beginning of July, but with the Drumcree crisis looming, she was dissuaded from such an early start.
So far the seminars have covered the government of Northern Ireland, public finance and relations with the EU. Yesterday's session was on North-South cooperation. On September 24th they will look at relations with the proposed Scottish and Welsh assemblies.
About 90 of the 108 Assembly members have attended seminars to date, including members of the anti-Belfast Agreement DUP and UKUP. They have taken place in Belfast's Europa Hotel, with a prominent keynote speaker and an experienced chairman. The first seminar on public finance, one of the best-attended, was chaired by Queen's University vice-chancellor, Prof George Bain, an expert in industrial relations, and addressed by Dr Chris Allsopp, an economist from Oxford.
The only notable absentees so far have been the party leaders, although leading figures like Mr John Taylor of the Ulster Unionists and Mr Sean Farren of the SDLP have attended.
Later this month, eight more focused seminars will begin on the areas which the Belfast Agreement intends to be taken over by the new Northern executive and its committees. The areas covered will be health and social services, agriculture, health, equality, environment, economic development, social security and child support and education. These will run until mid-November.
In early November, the European element, paid for by the European Commission, will bring the Assembly members to a three-day conference in Brussels. The programme will continue through 1999, with a series of study visits by committee members, young politicians and others to the US. "If they're not prepared after all this, it won't be for lack of trying," said one senior NIO official this week.