An Irish cabinet minister will make history when he addresses the Democratic Unionist party's annual conference.
Simon Coveney will become the first ever senior Irish minister to speak at the DUP's AGM in Belfast on Friday.
The secretary of state for agriculture is the keynote speaker at the DUP gathering and symbolises the growing rapprochement between Dublin and unionists in Northern Ireland.
Earlier this year the DUP junior minister at Stormont, Jonathan Bell, spoke at the annual conference of Coveney's Fine Gael, the main party in the ruling coalition south of the border.
The DUP is the largest political force in Northern Ireland and is led by the province's first minister, Peter Robinson.
The peace process and latterly power sharing has helped break a number of taboos between unionism and nationalism on the island.
Earlier this month Enda Kenny became the first Irish taoiseach to attend a Remembrance Sunday service when he laid flowers at the cenotaph in Enniskillen, Co Fermanangh, on the exact spot where 25 years earlier an IRA bomb exploded, killing 10 people.