Seldom in the history of relationships between people of different identities and conflicting national allegiances is the opportunity given to change fundamentally the expression of their relationships. The events in Armagh today mark one such opportunity.

There, the people of Ireland's two main political traditions, nationalist and unionist, will celebrate and begin implementing the fundamental changes to their relationships agreed in the Good Friday agreement. They will do so when Ministers from Belfast and Dublin inaugurate the North-South Ministerial Council.

The council's work will be advanced in two ways. First, by six new implementation bodies directly responsible to the council and, secondly, by initiating new forms of co-operation in six other areas. Its remit will, therefore, span 12 sectors ranging from agriculture, education, health, transport and tourism, to EU programmes, food safety, inland waterways, trade and business development. In each, the council will be required to develop programmes and initiatives to the mutual benefit of people North and South.

The inauguration of the council realises the second key objective of the Good Friday agreement, namely fostering new political relationships between unionists and nationalists throughout Ireland. This objective had been spelt out with increasing precision since it was first rather curiously described in the 1970s as the North's "Irish dimension". Then it was a dimension which unionists dismissed as, at best, peripheral to a solution to the Northern crisis, and, at worst, an unwarranted intrusion by the South into the North's affairs. Republicans dismissed it as a betrayal of the objective of removing British rule from Ireland.

Such views stressed impossible solutions, either exclusively within the confines of Northern Ireland, or in a completely separate all-Ireland context. Both only marginally focused on relationships between Ireland's distinct political communities.

That was never the SDLP view. Instead, the SDLP argued that it was the fractured relationships between unionist and nationalist which, more than anything else, had led to partition in the first place and, consequently, to the tragedies associated with that fracturing. Any attempt to heal that fracture had to address those relationships and build bridges across them.

New partnership institutions in the North had to be paralleled by North-South institutions based on parity of esteem for both traditions and consent to change.

It is through the practical outworking of the council's initiatives that those bridges will be built. At infrastructural level, for example, virtually all major developments in the North have implications south of the Border. Major distribution networks, whether in terms of roads, rail, telecommunications and energy supply, now all require cross-Border consideration.

Border areas provide the most immediate contexts for such initiatives.

Through them the reintegration of local economies in the Border regions will be significantly advanced. Local authorities in each area are currently developing integrated plans that now need the North-South Council's support to ensure effective implementation. Such plans include upgrading roads, modernising telecommunications, and the supply of energy and water.

Electricity and gas networks are major areas for co-ordinated infrastructural development. Proposals for a North-South gas link are under consideration, a link with considerable potential in light of the Corrib field's viability.

The further development of the island's inland waterways will produce considerable mutual benefit. The restored Erne-Shannon waterway is a model which Waterways Ireland, the implementation body to be responsible for navigable rivers throughout Ireland, could emulate by promoting the restoration of the Ulster Canal and by developing an island-wide, integrated network of inland waterways. With further development of the Celtic Tiger predicted, North-South trade will continue to expand. The Council's Trade and Business Development Body has a key role in stimulating that trade, currently worth £1.5 billion a year, with 30,000 jobs, directly and indirectly, dependent on it.

THE EU body will manage and monitor North-South initiatives of INTERREG III, Leader III, EQUAL and Peace and Reconciliation programmes. The more specific remits of the Aquaculture and Marine Implementation Body will focus on the overall development of the commercial and recreational potential of Lough Foyle and of Carlingford Lough.

Tourism is the single Northern industry to have been most adversely affected by the instability of the past 30 years. Now, growth is estimated to be at least a doubling of present levels. A publicly owned limited company to be established by Bord Failte and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board will implement co-ordinated international marketing initiatives. Combining with the South to market both parts of the island jointly will help realise this potential.

Agriculture is the largest single industry on the island. In terms of promoting the sale of agricultural produce, the industry in both parts of Ireland could benefit from initiatives by the Trade and Business Development Body.

In terms of deepening understanding of our traditions, education offers considerable scope for co-operation.

To the many pupil exchanges now taking place will be added teacher exchanges, curriculum development projects, joint university research and, possibly, the planning of university provision across a wide disciplinary range.

The establishment of the North-South Council will build on the enormous goodwill already evident for the new institutions in Northern Ireland. Its inauguration today marks the closure of a dark, tragic and never to be repeated chapter in the history of political relationships in Ireland and, in its place, the dawning of a new, more hopeful and completely peaceful era.

Dr Sean Farren MLA (SDLP) is Minister of Higher and Further Education, Training and Employment in the Northern Ireland Executive.