There are now more people in work in Northern Ireland than when the state was founded after partition in 1921.

At present the North has the fourth lowest unemployment rate in the entire UK.

And if the St Andrews Agreement is ratified by all the North's parties one of its top economists predicts that it will start experiencing dramatic growth rates.

Mike Smyth is currently advising the North's parties and the Preparation for Government Committee at Stormont. The economics lecturer from the University of Ulster has told the committee that Northern Ireland is on the edge of an economic revolution. The key to that revolution, Smyth insists, is the reform of the North's corporation taxation.

"If the St Andrews Agreement is accepted, one of the key tenets of it will be reforming corporation tax. I can tell you that the parties have insisted that corporation tax rates are lowered to the same level as the Republic and if that happens then the economy here will take off, " Smyth says.

Indeed, slashing corporation tax rates was so important to Ian Paisley and his negotiators at St Andrews that the Democratic Unionists insisted they wouldn't sign up to the deal to restore devolution without it.

At present, two engines are driving the North's economic recovery: the service sector and massive public expenditure. Smyth, however, is convinced that a deal on local corporation tax will send the economy into the stratosphere.

He points out that out of Fortune magazine's top 100 global corporations, 24 are currently based in the Irish Republic. These multinationals employ more than 100,000 workers in high-wage jobs.

There are none in Northern Ireland, where foreign corporations in the main are comprised of call centres.

That, according to Smyth, has to change.

"The contrast between two border towns . . . Dundalk and Newry . . . says it all. Newry's growth is driven by retail businesses like Sainsburys at the city's Quays development. But just down the road in Dundalk there are big multi-national corporations like HewlettPackard. That is where places like Newry and Northern Ireland in general could be attracting the big corporations via lower corporation tax, " Smyth says. At present corporation tax in Britain and the North stands at around 28%;

local politicians in the North want that lowered to 12.5%.

Nonetheless, Smyth argues that even without reform of corporation tax, the North is becoming increasingly attractive for outside investors, including those wanting to enter the property market.

"Twenty five years ago there were 500,000 people in work in Northern Ireland; today there are 700,000. There is more disposable income up here now than ever before."

Dr Graham Gudgin of the Belfast-based Regional Forecasts economic consultancy disputes the view that the office rental market will suffer from a shrinking public sector.

"If we get the corporation tax break then in will come high-wage companies seeking out office space in Belfast. In addition, we have forecast that there will be more migrant workers, principally from eastern Europe, arriving in Northern Ireland for work.

"Currently there are roughly 20,000 Poles and workers from the former Soviet Union working here. They all need somewhere to live so we expect the rental market to rise in order to accommodate them."

Gudgin however sounds a cautionary note about the hike in residential property prices north of the border. "At some stage they have got to bottom out or in some cases even fall down. The current rises can't continue indefinitely, " he adds.

While the Belfast area remains the most expensive and fastest growing, parts of the North's other regions are set to grow too. Derry for instance is soon to benefit from a major injection of all-Ireland finance. A paper to be published soon under Strand 2 of the Good Friday agreement and the aegis of the British Irish Inter-governmental Conference will announce a massive investment programme for Derry and Donegal. Hundreds of millions of euro are to be spent upgrading the main link between Dublin and Derry, the N2 in the south and the A5 in the north. Millions more euro are being put into the northwest to develop better links between Derry and Donegal towns like Letterkenny.

On the other side of the River Bann towns like Craigavon are also experiencing a property boom. According to the latest Halifax UK property index, Craigavon saw a price increase of 36% over the last 12 months. Ballymena and Lisburn report house prices rising by 31% in the same period.

Two other provincial towns already experiencing growth and expecting more are Banbridge and Bangor. The former is the fastest-growing town in the UK in terms of population. Bangor meanwhile is about to benefit from the expansion of the Springhills shopping centre on the town's ring road.

According to Declan Flynn, head of the island-wide Lisney property estate agents' office in Belfast, retail prices in Bangor rose by 4.5% last year.

Flynn says the rate is set to rise further with the expansion of Springhills by an extra 75,000sq ft as major UK retail chains locate in the 'capital' of north Down rather than Belfast.

One of the traditional industries of 20th-century Belfast was the Ormo bakery. The bakery relocated a couple of years ago from its traditional home to a soulless industrial estate.

The fate of the old building, the shell of the bakery it left behind, is symbolic of the North's regenerated economy and the new wealth flooding into the city. The bakery is being converted into a flat complex consisting of 150 luxury apartments. So far there are 3,000 would-be owners on the waiting list.