That’s the view of veteran politician, Sean Lynch MLA, who said the chances of a deal between the Stormont parties to form an Assembly would now be much harder to reach, and increased the chances of another local election. 

“It makes it much more likely, as of 11.15 this morning,” Mr Lynch told the Herald on Tuesday, following Ms May’s surprise announcement there would be a Westminster election on June 8. 

“One would suspect the DUP are not going to implement any agreements in the face of this election. That’s what this is about, the implementation of already agreed agreements.” 

Mr Lynch said, under what was negotiated in the St Andrew’s Agreement, the only legal option if the Assembly talks failed was to hold another election, and while it was possible we could see a return to Direct Rule, “to go down that route would be very bad faced” by both the British and Irish governments. 

He added: “Sinn Fein is in a confident position at the minute. We just had our best elections since 1918 six weeks ago. Everything has changed, the unionists have lost their majority. The political space has changed.”

With regard the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday morning, Mr Lynch said it was poor from that Theresa May “didn’t even mention the North” stating “she barely knows we exist” and the North was “only collateral damage” to the Conservatives.