Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair have agreed to embark on a new drive to persuade the DUP and Sinn Féin to take the initiatives to restore devolution to Northern Ireland, according to senior official sources.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair will meet in either London or Dublin in the last two weeks of this month. In February or March, Mr Blair is planning a major speech in Northern Ireland similar to the keynote "acts of completion" address he delivered in Belfast in October 2002.
All the signs are that the Independent Monitoring Commission's report on IRA activity, due to be published in early February, will be positive and the governments are hoping to use that report as the spur for renewed political action to restore devolution.
And as part of the concentration of political minds, Northern Secretary Peter Hain availed of a BBC Radio Ulster interview on Saturday to warn he may stop pay and allowances to the North's Assembly members if there is no sign of political progress by the summer.
Each of the 108 Assembly members was receiving £85,000 (€123,500) in pay and expenses.
Since suspension in October 2002 it cost £78 million (€113 million) for the Assembly "to do nothing", added Mr Hain.
Last Thursday Mr Blair, who is now free from his European Union presidency and G8 responsibilities, gave over a day at Downing Street to meet Mr Hain and key Northern Ireland officials to plan the strategic way ahead to persuade DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams to finally do business together.
"You will certainly see a quickening of the political pace in February," said a senior official yesterday. "We are not trying to bounce anybody into anything, but if the IMC report says the IRA is inactive, as we expect, then there are key questions that the DUP and Sinn Féin must answer," he said.
"If the IRA is off the stage, then the DUP will have to provide reasons for not engaging with Sinn Féin. Equally with the enabling legislation coming through to devolve justice and policing to the Assembly, if it returns, Sinn Féin will have to explain why it isn't signing up to policing. That's where the political focus will be," he added.
In October 2002 after the Stormontgate collapse of the Northern Executive and Assembly, Mr Blair made it clear in a major speech at Belfast Harbour Commissioners that until the IRA disarmed and ended activity - the "acts of completion" - there could be no political movement.
Mr Blair and his senior advisers are now planning a similar speech in Northern Ireland, sometime around the period of the February IMC report, making it clear that the DUP and Sinn Féin must take risks respectively on power-sharing and policing to facilitate a return to devolution.
Mr Ahern also indicated a gathering Dublin-London Northern political process momentum when he told RTÉ's This Week programme yesterday that risks must be taken to reinstate the Northern Executive and Assembly.
"I really believe that 2006 is the year where we should try to get back the institutions in Northern Ireland. Everybody has to take chances, everybody has to take risks," he said.
Remaining obstacles could be overcome, but politicians should not be seeking the unobtainable, he said. "If we all try to get it absolutely right, absolutely certain that every last thing is tied down, that every last gun is gone and that every dodgy character on all sides is absolutely clean - you just can't make that happen. We have to take some chances," added Mr Ahern.
Mr Adams, at a Sinn Féin ard chomhairle meeting in Dublin on Saturday, welcomed what he said was a British-Irish governmental commitment to "revive the peace process".
"The Good Friday agreement cannot be kept in mothballs indefinitely and we have told both governments that the Assembly, in its current form, is not viable. The political vacuum cannot continue.
"Following the IRA initiatives of last year there is growing expectation among the public that the process will move forward. There needs to be progress by the summer," he said.
DUP justice spokesman Ian Paisley jnr said the DUP wanted to make political progress but that it had to be on a "firm foundation". SDLP leader Mark Durkan said the two governments "need to be very clear and convincing that we are on a countdown to restoration of the democratic institutions of the Good Friday agreement".
