Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern will be in Belfast today for talks with political parties ahead of discussions hosted by the Taoiseach Bertie and Tony Blair next week.
Dermot Ahern's meetings at Stormont with the parties are the latest in an ongoing series he is holding with them.
They come as the International Monitoring Commission handed its latest assessment of paramilitary activity in the North to the two Governments. The findings, when they are published, could have a significant impact on efforts to restore power-sharing.
The DUP is calling for further assurances on republican criminality before accepting Sinn Féin.
The talks today, which will not involve Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, come as the governments seek to broker a deal between the parties for the return of devolved government before the deadline of November 24th that they have imposed.
The Taoiseach and Mr Blair will host three days of intensive discussions at St Andrews in Scotland between Wednesday and Friday next week. The decision to hold the talks, in which the politicians are supposed to be locked away from the media, in Scotland has been criticised by some unionists as a waste of money.
The Rev Ian Paisley's DUP insists they will not be forced into action by any deadline and want assurances the IRA has given up violence and Sinn Féin given
its backing to policing in Northern Ireland before they enter government with the republicans.
The IMC report is expected to reconfirm the view it expressed in a report last month that the IRA was committed to a political path. However the DUP has discounted the report in advance as something which could prompt them into government with Sinn Féin.
The report will focus on the murder of Denis Donaldson the leading Sinn Féin member who was shot dead in a Co Donegal house he had gone to after being unmasked as a long term British intelligence agent.
The report is expected to say Mr Donaldson was murdered by members of the IRA but that they were acting without the sanction of the IRA leadership.
It has also been confirmed that Dr Paisley is to hold first-ever talks with the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland. The historic meeting with Archbishop Sean Brady is expected to take place at Stormont next Monday - two days before Mr Paisley heads to St Andrews.