Paisley: 'The Ice Age is over'

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said there is great scope for cross-border cooperation on a range of projects as he arrived at today's North-South council meeting.

The Taoiseach said the event represented another important day in the history of Northern Ireland.

He also agreed it was a new political era for North-South cooperation.

“There is no doubt about that. What has happened since May 8 has been extraordinary and has been very successful,” he added.

Mr Ahern acknowledged the progress achieved by the North's First Minister Ian Paisley and the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, since May and also remarked that Armagh City was the birthplace of Rev Paisley.

Focusing on the meeting, he added: “We have a very busy agenda today and a very busy workload set out between now and the end of the year.

“There are a lot of important projects where we can work in co-operation with each other. When you look down the agenda, these are all issues that make eminent sense for us to work closely together on.”

At today's meeting, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness head a team of ministers meeting Mr Ahern and a number of Irish ministers.

The North-South council was set up under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement but has not sat for five years.

Even during the first attempt at devolution, it was not attended by DUP ministers, who considered then that it gave Dublin too big a say in the North.

But in the new political era those worries were, at least in public, pushed aside.

Mr Paisley arrived at the meeting alongside Mr McGuinness declaring: “The ice age is over.”

He recalled that he had at one time thrown snowballs at Irish ministers when they crossed the border.

He declared: “I am very glad to be here today. This is new territory to a large extent and I hope it will be very successful. I hope that some announcements will be made today to show that we mean business.”

Mr Paisley said he saw the role of the body as one in which there was no competition but joint working. “We want both parts of Ireland to prosper.”

He had insisted he would not go ahead with the meeting until there had first been a session of the British-Irish council.

Mr McGuinness said the institutions of power-sharing at Stormont, the British-Irish council and the North-South ministerial council were all hugely important.

“I believe they can deliver for the people who live, not just on this island, but other islands as well.”

Arriving for the meeting at an Armagh hotel, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern described the gathering as “very significant”.

He said having Mr Paisley and Mr McGuinness involved together “indicates how far we have come. I believe it is a new political era”.

The meeting was due to discuss a series of matters of mutual consent, but to focus largely on transport issues.

This included proposals to reopen another section of the Ulster Canal as part of a €148m scheme to reopen waterways which would eventually enable navigation from the extreme north across the border and down to the Shannon.

A new air route between Dublin and Belfast was also up for discussion.