One group of people on this island who will be particularly happy with the return of an assembly to Northern Ireland is the farming population, which feels that the decades of direct rule from London have not served their needs.

An examination of their claims highlights some discrepancies between the supports available to farmers North and South, despite what should be a Common Agricultural Policy.

For instance, young farmers in the North do not have the benefit of a Farm Installation Scheme. This scheme gives a tax break to young farmers who are attempting to set up in business. And at the other end of working life, farmers in the North cannot benefit from the EU Early Retirement Scheme, under which farmers in the Republic can retire at 55 with an income of up to £10,000 a year.

One of the most successful schemes in the Republic which has been used as a vehicle to get money to Ireland's poorest farmers, the Rural Environment Protection Scheme, is far more rigid in the North. Northern farmers complain that their scheme is far too strict and the criteria much more expensive to achieve than in the Republic where thousands of farmers have entered into contracts to farm in an environmentally sensitive way.

In addition, Northern farmers must buy or lease land to increase milk quota. In the Republic, farmers below a certain production level have a right to buy unused milk quota at a fixed rate of £1.60 per gallon, at least £1 cheaper than the Northern farmer has to pay.

But perhaps the greatest blow to Northern farming life has been the BSE crisis. They got caught up in the EU ban on beef from the UK despite the fact their BSE figures were much lower than in the rest of the UK. This ban was only removed from Northern beef earlier this month but valuable markets, especially those in the Netherlands, have been lost to Northern exporters.

Finally, Britain's refusal to adopt a single currency with most of the EU partners, has meant that sterling is over-valued, making Northern farmers very uncompetitive vis-a-vis the Republic.

The soil may be the same, the climate similar and the system of farming identical, but the North has a lot of catching up to do to put in the kind of supports farmers in the Republic enjoy.