While at GE, Morgan helped found a private Protestant school, the Christian Heritage School, in Trumbull, Conn.

FORBES: Corporate Communion

Once the assembly's executive of up to 12 ministers is running Ulster's schools, hospitals, housing and other services, there will be plenty of occasions on which a small, local dispute such as a current row in County Fermanagh over the appointment of two Catholics to a Protestant school's canteen could cause a crisis at Stormont.

ECONOMIST: Storm warning for Stormont

Some Catholic children who attend Holy Cross pass through a few hundred yards of a Protestant area to reach the school gates.

BBC: Q&A: Tension in north Belfast

Some of the Protestant residents refused to let children reach the school saying their community was facing republican attacks and intimidation.

BBC: Q&A: Tension in north Belfast

But in many cases the aim is to convince the government to provide full funding for the school, as with the many existing Catholic, Protestant and Jewish state schools.

ECONOMIST: Private education

Born into a Protestant family in a Paris suburb, where his overbearing father was head of a school for the handicapped, Mr Jospin showed little early promise.

ECONOMIST: Lionel Jospin, escape artist