Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit the seat of the North/South Ministerial Council in Armagh, and to observe the progress that has been made by its seven joint institutions since their establishment in 1999 following the Belfast Agreement, writes Garret FitzGerald.
Of course, for several years the suspension of the Northern Executive has deprived these bodies of the joint ministerial input which got them off the ground, and the active engagement necessary for any new functions to be conferred on them.
However, during this political vacuum the two governments have authorised the six joint bodies and Tourism Ireland to continue to develop their mandates, and have also continued with inter-governmental co-operation between their departments of education, agriculture, environment, health and transport.
I suspect the scale and intensity of the work being carried out by bodies under the aegis of the Joint Ministerial Council, which now employ over 700 people at 17 locations around the island, is not generally understood or appreciated.
Thus, few people appreciate that tourism promotion for the whole of our island is now, sensibly, undertaken by a single body.
Again, I doubt if it is generally understood that under the auspices of the Joint Ministerial Council, the new Special EU Programmes Body has since 1999 been responsible for the cross-Border EU schemes Intereg and Peace.
In the current phase of these programmes almost €470 million in EU funds has been allocated to 220 projects.
The joint chief executives of the North/South Language Body, with its two elements of Foras na Gaeilge and the Board of Ulster-Scots, are Seosamh Mac Donncha, former president of the GAA, and George Patton, former secretary of the Orange Order.
The close personal relationship between them as they undertake this task demonstrates the positive possibilities of developing North/South co-operation based on mutual respect. (Ulster-Scotch has survived in east Down, especially in the Ard Peninsula, in parts of Antrim and the area west of Coleraine, and in east Donegal.)
The Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission has responsibility for two agencies.
One the Loughs Agency, is up and running. It was created to administer the two loughs, in respect of both of which there have been jurisdictional problems since the 1921 Treaty founding the Irish State.
The other is the Lights Agency designed to replace the Irish Lights Commission, which since 1921 has anomalously continued to have what are politely described as "lines of communication" to the British Ministry of Transport. Legislation is still awaited to give effect to the Lights Agency.
Waterways Ireland, the headquarters of which is in Enniskillen, is responsible for our island's inland waterways.
While most of these are in the South, the Lower Bann Navigation, the Erne system and part of the Shannon-Erne Waterway are in the North.
So also is the defunct Ulster Canal, the possible restoration of which is being studied by Waterways Ireland.
The promotion of food safety for the island, and support for scientific co-operation in this area, is undertaken by the Food Safety Promotion Board.
Inter-Trade Ireland, based in Newry, is undertaking a wide range of activities in relation to cross-Border trade and business development.
As our two economies are competitive rather than complementary, the volume of trade across the Border is not huge.
However, both parts of the island have much to learn from each other, and from co-operation in the development of exports to the rest of the world.
Through the work of Inter-Trade Ireland, some 20 strategic partnerships have been initiated in matters as diverse as technology transfer, all-Ireland sales and marketing programmes, supply chain initiatives, and creating an all-Ireland public procurement directory.
This body has organised more than 50 all-Ireland events, and has aided 4,500 companies on both sides of the Border.
When the Belfast Agreement was signed seven years ago I regretted that the North's political parties did not agree to more joint functions.
There was great reluctance then on the part of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) negotiators to transfer certain significant functions to North-South bodies, for fear of negative reactions from within their community.
I suspect that the UUP would claim to have been vindicated by the absence of controversy about the work being undertaken by the bodies then established, and by the extraordinarily positive relationship that has grown up between those from the two administrations engaged in this exercise.
While this is true, I cannot help feeling that unionist reticence seven years ago has lost Northern Ireland an opportunity to recover economic ground lost during the preceding half-century - its share of the island's output has declined from 37-38 per cent in the early 1950s to 23-24 per cent today.
The North's per capita output is today about 22 per cent below that of the Republic.
Had the UUP not been so dominated by political considerations it could have used that occasion to wring from the British government - hopefully with EU consent - agreement on a Northern Ireland corporate tax regime close to ours.
It might also have extorted from our government consent to converting the highly-successful IDA into an all-Ireland body, promoting the growth of industrial and financial activity on all of the island.
At that moment the UUP had a unique bargaining power with the British government, and in his commitment to success in the negotiations Tony Blair could have forced the hand of his chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, in relation to the tax issue.
Of course, an all-Ireland IDA might still be on the cards, if at some date a pragmatic Democratic Unionist Party was to seek it.
This would be a request that any future Irish government concerned about the future of Northern Ireland as well as the Republic would find hard to refuse.
Meanwhile we should rejoice at the success of the all-Ireland bodies that emerged from the Belfast Agreement.
Much of this success has been due to the dedication and enthusiasm of civil servants from North and South.
It is also due to the staff and boards of the bodies, working in the common interest of both parts of our island.
Considerable credit is also due to the politicians, North and South, for the way in which they worked together in the North/South Ministerial Council between 1999 and 2002.