Sinn Féin is now the largest party in both local government and Stormont for the first time after making huge gains in council elections.
With 14 seats left to be filled, the party has won 139, up from the 105 councillors returned in 2019.
Its vice-president Michelle O’Neill called for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to end its boycott of power sharing at Stormont.
The DUP has 119 seats, with the centre-ground Alliance Party in third place.
Stormont’s assembly and governing executive is not functioning because of the DUP’s protest against post-Brexit trading rules.
In last year’s assembly election, Sinn Féin became the largest party at Stormont.
Ms O’Neill described the council election result as “historic”.
She said Sinn Féin’s campaign, which has seen it make breakthroughs in areas such as Coleraine, Ballymena and Lisburn, was about “positive leadership, it was about a restoration of the executive, it was about making politics work”.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said…
This article was written by and originally published on www.bbc.co.uk