The professional lobbyists have arrived in Northern Ireland.
Stormont Strategy, a joint venture between London and Belfast public relations companies, trusts the Assembly and all the other structures of the Belfast Agreement will work and survive.
The people behind Stormont Strategy, Mr Michael Burrell and Mr Richard Gordon, believe the Assembly, the North-South Council, the implementation bodies and all the other elements of the agreement may provide rich pickings.
Mr Burrell, a former political correspondent turned public relations consultant who heads Westminster Strategy, parent of Stormont Strategy, acknowledged yesterday that lobbyists have had a bad press.
"Admitting you are a lobbyist is a bit like admitting you play a piano in a brothel," he said in Belfast's Waterfront Hall, where Stormont Strategy was formally introduced.
"People in our business take quite a lot of stick. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves. "But I believe just as strongly now as I did 13 years ago when I formed Westminster Strategy that lobbying, properly conducted and professionally delivered, does have an important part to play in modern democracies," added Mr Burrell.
"I don't want to overstate this, but I hope the establishment of Stormont Strategy can be seen as a modest symbol of the growing pace of political change in Northern Ireland," he added.
Mr Gordon, head of Gordon Corporate Communications in Belfast, said Stormont Strategy would cater for business organisations, trade associations, pressure groups, and anyone else who needed to tap into the workings of the Assembly.
