Following completion of the count in the Assembly election, the Taoiseach is preparing to enter a round of meetings this week with Northern political leaders to discuss the next steps in implementing the process.
Yesterday Mr Ahern identified the establishment of the North-South dimension and the implementation bodies as "the most important thing" and the area where he would concentrate his efforts over the next 12 months.
He will discuss the next phase of implementing the Belfast Agreement when he meets the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, tomorrow at the opening ceremony for the new European Central Bank in Frankfurt.
Within the next week Mr Ahern will also meet the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, as well as the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams. Plans are under way to have meetings with the unionist and loyalist leaderships.
He said Mr Blair had assured him that he wanted this process to work. Certainly, over the next 12 months a host of things had to happen, Mr Ahern said. The Assembly would have to "get up and operational"; the same must happen with the Executive; the Human Rights and Police Commissions would have to be dealt with. Decommissioning would also be ongoing. However, the North-South element of the agreement would absorb much of his time in the year ahead.
Predicting the Assembly would have a sufficiently large pro-agreement representation to make it workable, the Taoiseach said in an interview on RTE's This Week programme yesterday that if the UUP had done a little bit better, "things would be a bit easier for David Trimble . . . but the fact is he is still in a strong position".
He said Mr Trimble accepted that things could not stay as they were. "We have to move to change. We are moving to a new century. We are moving to change the agenda. Nobody is trying to dominate anybody. Nobody is trying to get one up on anybody. We are trying to get away from violence, and murder and mayhem to reconciliation, and trust and confidence. David Trimble has a key part to play in that," Mr Ahern said.
He added that, after 30 years of violence and all that had happened and was said, there were people who did not want change and wanted to stay in "the old ways".
Acknowledging that the Sinn Fein vote was growing, having expanded from 12.4 per cent in the 1993 local elections to 17.6 per cent in the Assembly election, Mr Ahern said nationalists were now in a strong position. It was interesting to note that nationalists were "transferring to the other side".
He said he had not discussed the possibility of a visit to the Republic by Queen Elizabeth when he met her recently at the EU dinner in Cardiff. He had met her three times this year and he believed, even though there was no direct invitation, that she would like to visit Ireland over the coming years. "I think that is going to be a while away. But I do think in the cold light of day that it is something that will happen," he added.
The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, has urged nationalists to recognise that they can no longer be "comfortable spectators of the battle for the heart of unionism".
He said in a statement: "They have a vested interest in the result. The SDLP and Sinn Fein have both done very well in the Assembly elections. They got their vote out. They have shown professionalism in political organisation. Now that these achievements are behind them, the time has come for nationalists generally to recognise their vested interest in underpinning a unionist leadership that, for once, is willing to do business with them."
The next three days would be vital. Disarray in unionism was not good news for nationalists. It could be "very bad news indeed" if it prevented unionism from delivering its side of the Belfast Agreement.