SINN FEIN and the DUP looked set to clean up their respective sides of Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide as counting got under way in the snap election yesterday.

After the first round of voting in the single transferable vote election, republican Sinn Fein had taken 27.9 per cent and the Democratic Unionist Party 28.1 per cent.

But with the two erstwhile partners in the executive forswearing a return to a powersharing government, direct rule from Westminster loomed large.