Delegates to the SDLP annual conference will debate building a closer alliance with Fianna Fáil at a closed session this weekend.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern will represent Fianna Fáil at the conference, which begins tonight in Armagh. He has been selected by his party to head a special body examining ways in which it can develop into a 32-county organisation.
Former Labour leader Ruairí Quinn will represent that party, which has a special relationship with the SDLP, in common with other social democratic parties across the EU.
For the first time the Ulster Unionists will also send official representatives to a nationalist party conference. Lagan Valley Assembly member Basil McCrea and his South Down colleague John McCallister will attend the conference on Saturday to hear the leader's address by Mark Durkan.
Their attendance follows the speech to the Ulster Unionist conference by Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie. She earned a standing ovation for her call to the smaller Executive parties not to be "dominated" by Sinn Féin and the DUP. A party spokesman said Sunday's private session would consider "relationships across this island". Sources insist the party would consider closer links to other parties and not just Fianna Fáil. Mark Durkan has said new developments and linkages will be a natural development of the new dispensation following devolution at Stormont earlier this year.
South Down MP Eddie McGrady, who has represented the SDLP at Westminster since 1987, is also due to be declared party chairman. Mr McGrady, the party's first chairman when the SDLP was founded in 1970, is the sole candidate for the position and will be deemed elected unopposed when a range of internal party positions are contested.
The conference will also be addressed by Ms Ritchie, who has controversially stopped Executive funding for a loyalist-linked conflict transformation initiative that depended on UDA decommissioning.
It is not thought she will speak further about the row between her and Minister for Finance Peter Robinson about the manner in which she announced the ending of the finance. The issue is expected to be contested in court in the coming weeks. However, she is expected to discuss social housing and the need, as she sees it, for a larger budget than that announced last week.