When, and if, the executive gets up and running, Northern politicians, for the first time since the brief Sunningdale experiment in 1974, will have to take their own decisions on education, health, agriculture, social welfare and other matters. With power will come responsibility. In future the North's 10 ministers must decide what hospitals or schools to close or expand, what housing programmes to reject, what industrial projects to promote or dismiss.
If the decommissioning hurdle can be surmounted, diametrically opposed politicians such as Mr Peter Robinson and Mr Nigel Dodds of the DUP and Mr Mitchel McLaughlin and possibly Mr Martin McGuinness (if he wants a ministry) of Sinn Fein may have to sit together in government and agree hard decisions affecting their areas.
The UUP and the SDLP will each be entitled to three ministerial posts, the DUP and Sinn Fein to two each. There will be keen competition for these places, even within the DUP, which is opposed to the Belfast Agreement.
It is unclear as yet which parties will get which portfolios and who is likely to join Mr David Trimble and Mr Seamus Mallon in the Northern Ireland cabinet. Politicians one would expect to see there are: Mr John Taylor, Mr Reg Empey and Mr Dermot Nesbitt of the UUP; Mr Mark Durkan, Ms Brid Rodgers and Mr Sean Farren or Mr Eddie McGrady of the SDLP; Mr Robinson and possibly Mr Dodds or Mr Ian Paisley junior or the Rev William McCrea of the DUP (assuming Dr Paisley considers he has enough political responsibility); and Ms Bairbre de Brun and Mr Mitchel McLaughlin or Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein. (Mr Gerry Adams feels he already has enough responsibility.)
Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon will also look after an economic policy unit and equality matters.
The coveted departments include the spending ones, such as environment, regional development and social development. Health and education will also be popular but again new ministers may have to make difficult decisions. The salary of £45,000, which is expected to quickly increase, will provide some compensation. There are still months of hard negotiation ahead before the executive could go live but the deal struck by tired politicians around 4 a.m. on Friday provides the basis for the future government of Northern Ireland.
Unionists and nationalists lay emphasis on elements of the deal that are in tune with their political philosophy. UUP members stress the six North-South implementation bodies are ultimately answerable to the Assembly and suggest their powers and remit are fairly anodyne. Nonetheless, six bodies are to be established and six other areas of co-operation have been identified, which provide nationalists with a real hands-across-the-Border link with the Republic - something that is anathema to the opponents of the Belfast Agreement. Unionists who support the Agreement say these bodies deal with matters that make simple co-operative sense and that a number of them in different guises are already in existence.
The six implementation bodies with their own employees, managers and chief executives will deal on an all-Ireland basis with trade and business development, European Union investment, the Irish language and Ulster Scots, food safety, inland waterways, and aquaculture. The British and Irish governments must fund the enterprise. All going well, some well-paid posts will be appearing in the job sections of newspapers. The first three implementation bodies are particularly important to nationalists. Indeed, one of the main stumbling blocks to agreement was a dispute over the power that would be vested in the trade and business development body.
Among the tasks of the Special EU Programmes body will be to implement European programmes that have a North-South element.
The language body, which Sinn Fein lobbied strongly for, will promote the Irish language on an all-Ireland basis and also a greater awareness and use of Ulster Scots. The six bodies will come under the auspices of the North-South ministerial council (NSMC). The NSMC will also be charged with identifying how the six areas for co-operation - transport, agriculture, education, health, environment, and tourism - can best be managed.
There are already in place specific proposals for tourism which involve the creation of a publicly-owned limited company by Bord Failte and the Northern Ireland Tourist Board to attract visitors to the island of Ireland. The 10 Northern departments and six implementation bodies will also involve a significant, perhaps unsettling, realignment of the civil services, particularly in the North. Northern Ireland is said to have over 50 quangos and a number of these may also be subsumed into the new Northern departments, to facilitate meaningful devolution of power. Reponsibility for law and order (policing, the British army, prisons and the justice system) will remain with the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam. She has four junior ministers working with her - effectively the present government of Northern Ireland - but if local politicians can make Friday's deal work some of them may be receiving their P45s.