The announcement of the members of the commission on the future of policing in Northern Ireland may be made today despite some misgivings in Dublin about the timing.
The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, may reveal the names when she addresses the annual conference of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland at Newcastle, Co Down, this morning.
It has already been confirmed that the commission will be chaired by the former Northern Ireland minister and former governor of Hong Kong, Mr Chris Patten.
There is speculation that the members could include Ms Kathleen O'Toole, from Boston, Secretary of Public Safety for the State of Massachusetts; Mr Maurice Hayes, a member of Seanad Eireann and one of the few Catholics to reach senior level in the North's public service in Stormont days; Sir John Smith, former deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London; Ms Lucy Woods, chief executive of British Telecom in Northern Ireland; and Prof Clifford Sheering, a criminologist from the University of Toronto who has South African connections.
Mr Patten is expected to be accompanied by a senior official from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who will act as secretary to the commission. Despite her Irish-American background, there appear to be political reservations in some pro-nationalist Irish-American circles about the choice of Ms O'Toole.
As an American and a Catholic of Irish descent she might be expected to arouse opposition from unionists and loyalists but, surprisingly, the initial rumblings are coming from nationalist circles in the US.
However, the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, refused to comment on individual names, stressing instead the need for members to "enjoy the confidence of the nationalist section of our people".
Meanwhile, a founder-member of the Parades Commission in the North called for the body to be disbanded and replaced by a subcommittee of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Rev Roy Magee, who resigned from the commission last December when it failed to publish its assessment of contentious parades following intervention by the Prime Minister, said: "The Parades Commission is not accountable and that brings them into question with loyalists and unionists."