Northern Secretary Peter Hain has spoken of his deep frustration after Northern parties again failed to agree who should chair an Assembly committee devoted to identifying how devolution might be restored by the Irish and British governments' deadline of November 24th.
And while Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair remain committed to holding talks with the parties at the end of this month aimed at bringing some impetus to the political process, Sinn Féin has warned that there was little prospect of agreement by November if this logjam was not broken.
Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and Alliance have chiefly blamed the DUP for the deadlock, while the DUP has said the responsibility lay with the aforementioned parties.
Ulster Unionist MLA Alan McFarland reflected a growing view when he said the dispute over who should chair the programme-for-government committee was holding the political process up to "public ridicule".
The row over the committee has been running for three weeks now. The first two weeks involved wrangling over whether it should be formed, with DUP leader Ian Paisley initially saying the DUP would not engage with Sinn Féin on the committee.
This was resolved with agreement that the committee would identify obstacles to restoring devolution as opposed to negotiating them.
However this week the committee had not formally opened proper business because of the deadlock over who should be chair. This revolves around DUP opposition to Sinn Féin taking the chair - it would rotate between the parties - and Sinn Féin's insistence it must at some stage hold the post.
Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said yesterday that "if the DUP were not prepared to do the business" then the British government "would be as well stopping the salaries at the end of June". The DUP said it had made a number of proposals, including having the Assembly speaker Eileen Bell chair the committee - she refused because she said it would undermine her impartiality - or having Alliance leader David Ford or DUP MP William McCrea take the chair.
The parties yesterday attempted to hand responsibility for resolving the dispute back to Mr Hain but he batted the issue back to the parties. Expressing his "deep frustration", he said: "It is impossible to see the Assembly moving on substantive business if there cannot be agreement on such a basic procedural issue as chairing the preparation-for-government committee."
