The Northern Ireland peace process will succeed, the US politician who brokered the Belfast Agreement Mr George Mitchell.
However Mrs Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition was less optimist today as she told RTE's This WeekProgramme she believed the Northern Executive would be suspended tomorrow after the vote on Unionist motion to ban Sinn Féin ministers.
On Friday the Appeal Court in Belfast upheld an earlier judgment that the Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble's ban on the North's Education Minister, Mr Martin McGuinness, and the Health Minister, Ms Bairbre de Brún, meeting their Southern counterparts was unlawful.
But Mrs McWilliams said she believed the institutions would survive long-term. She said the peace process was working but people in the North wanted to see it working permanently.
Earlier today speaking on Sky News' Sunday with Adam Boultonprogramme, US Senator Mitchell remained optimistic that the people of Northern Ireland would ensure the process worked. He said he believed they didn't "want to go back to conflict".
The former Maine Senator also said decommissioning would have to take place in Northern Ireland.
But he added there would also have to be progress on the other problem issues like policing and the scaling down of military installations and operations.
Mr Mitchell expressed confidence the politicians could "work their way through these problems".
"I think things are so much better than they were when there was open conflict. Admittedly there are many problems. They are very severe. Implementation has not gone as well as could have been hoped for, but in the end I think people don't want to go back to conflict.
"I think there are some - small numbers on each side - who are unreconciled and want to get everything their own way. But I go to Belfast a lot. When I first went there you didn't see cranes, you didn't see any construction. You go to Belfast now and take your camera with you and what do you see? You see cranes all over the place."
Senator Mitchell said disarmament remained as difficult an issue for the Northern Ireland parties as it was when he chaired the talks which led to the Belfast Agreement and subsequent negotiations leading to the formation of the Stormont power sharing government in December 1999.
But he added: "It will have to occur, of that I have no doubt. And if there is going to be any progress there has to also be progress on the other issues that remain - police reform, so-called demilitarisation and other aspects. We have got to proceed on a broad front."
Senator Mitchell's comments coincided with renewed speculation in Northern Ireland that the IRA might be planning a gesture on disarmament. Sources in Stormont and Dublin are uncertain when the IRA will move but believe a decision has already been taken.