The establishment of the North/South ministerial council and the North-South bodies

This paper sets out the background to the new North-South institutional architecture contained in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement—the negotiations themselves and the outcome. Given that much of the detail remained to be further worked out after Good Friday, it recounts the talks held in the Autumn of 1998 and in early 1999, culminating in the agreement between the two governments establishing the implementation bodies, signed in Dublin Castle on 8 March 1999. The paper out-lines the main elements of that agreement, including the nature of the functions and structure of each of the implementation bodies, together with the common arrangements that were to apply all of them.