Published Thursday, 26 January 2012
The SNP leader says the referendum ballot will pose a question to the Scottish people, in less than two years time, requiring the most important decision in 300 years to be made.
"With independence, we can have a new social union with the other nations within these islands," Mr Salmond told the Scottish parliament.
"We will continue to share Her Majesty the Queen as Head of State - but we won't have our young servicemen and women dragged into illegal wars like Iraq and we won't have nuclear weapons based on Scottish soil."
Amid considerable political debate on the issue, the future of the United Kingdom is at stake - meaning major implications for Northern Ireland.
"Politically, it's inconceivable that the disintegration of the core of the union would not cause a whole ripple effect," former Northern Ireland human rights commissioner Christine Bell told UTV.
Now a professor of Constitutional Law at Edinburgh University, she added that such a development would result in "a need to reconstitute and redefine and re-describe the United Kingdom in some shape or form - and that would have implications for Northern Ireland".
On the streets of Edinburgh, some people were of the opinion that independence is inevitable - others were less convinced that the support for Mr Salmond's plans is wide-spread enough to get the result the SNP leader wants.
Editor of The Scotsman, John McLelland, told UTV hard questions over practicalities need asking.
"I don't think there's any doubt that Scotland could survive as an independent country," he said.
"The question is whether or not we would prosper as an independent country - whether we do better than we are just now and whether or not it's a leap worth taking."
Northern Ireland's politicians will be keeping an eye on the independence debate across the water.
While Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness has already stated that he believes local elected representatives should stay out of Scotland's affairs - but both the DUP leader Peter Robinson and UUP leader Tom Elliott have said their parties should take strong stands in defence of unionism.