As crews across Ireland, North and South, work to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses following Storm Ophelia, Sinn Féin and the DUP are as far away as ever from getting the lights turned back on at Stormont.
A general sense took hold late last week a deal was close, with the Belfast News Letter reporting on Saturday that Arlene Foster's party was informally sounding out selected members about the possible shape of a deal.
The report led to a statement from the DUP that it was not canvassing opinion "at this present time". The statement also said that "the notion that an agreement is imminent…has no basis in fact".
Before a meeting of Sinn Féin's executive board, the ard chomhairle, on Saturday, Gerry Adams said he agreed with this assessment. However, as we report this morning, the belief in Dublin, as well as London, is that Michelle O'Neill was ready to do a deal but was effectively blocked by senior members in Sinn Féin.
Sinn Féin has emphatically rejected these suggestions but the impression that Gerry Adams is not serious about restoring the Executive is gaining traction at senior levels in Government, perhaps explaining the increasing edge in exchanges between Ministers and Sinn Féin.
There also is an acute awareness of the difficult spot Foster finds herself in. She promised not to introduce an Irish language act during the Assembly election campaign, but now needs to get a deal to secure her own leadership.
As Shane Coleman points out in his column in the Irish Independent this morning, Sinn Féin must make the Executive work before its governmental ambitions in the Republic are taken seriously. But southern politics could be at play in another direction, too.
Sinn Féin, having seen its attempts to make itself acceptable as a coalition partner in Dublin roundly rejected, could have decided to harden its position in Belfast. It could ask itself why it should listen to Dublin telling it what to do, when the two big parities, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, repeatedly declare it unfit for office.
While out inspecting the ESB fix power lines on the Kildare-Meath border yesterday evening, the Taoiseach gave a downbeat assessment of the current state of play in Northern Ireland.
“At the moment, they are not close to a deal,” he said.
"Things did look encouraging at the start of last week and became less favourable during the week. I'll let the different parties account for themselves about what went wrong. Both the DUP and Sinn Fein are arguing about the intricacies of an Irish language act and it would seem to me that what the people of Northern Ireland want is for their politicians to get together and start looking after the business of Northern Ireland."
