The Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie has said he believes the DUP will re-enter Stormont after the council elections in May.

Asked on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics if he thought the DUP would make the move following the May 18th poll, Mr Beattie said: “I do… what I think is, they will go back in, because I think they realise it’s good for unionists to be in and have a voice and be able to challenge the government.”

Speaking on the same programme, the DUP MLA Emma Little-Pengelly emphasised her party wanted to “get Stormont back, the DUP is a party of devolution” but said the focus was on “getting the right foundations to ensure stable government”.

“The reality is a house built on sand cannot stand, it will be weakened, and therefore we have to get this right.

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“That is why we’re taking careful time and consideration of these matters,” she said, adding that “we want to get the right deal and a fair deal”.

The DUP has yet to give its official response to the Windsor Framework – the deal on post-Brexit trading arrangements reached between the UK and EU in February – though it voted against it in the House of Commons and a number of high-profile party figures have voiced their opposition.

The party is continuing to block the formation of an Executive or Assembly in Northern Ireland as part of its protest over the Northern Ireland protocol and is refusing to re-enter the power-sharing institutions until its concerns are dealt with.

An eight-party panel set up by the DUP to examine the framework against the DUP criteria has delivered its report to the party leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, who said on Friday he would now “take time to discuss the report with my party officer team”.

Sinn Féin MP John Finucane reiterated his party’s call for a swift restoration of the Assembly and Executive, saying “people are suffering … we need our structures up and running very quickly”.

“The negotiations are over, that’s just a matter of political fact, and to expect people to suffer continuously for a further period of time … I don’t think is fair,” he said.

In an interview on the same programme, Minister for Enterprise and former minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, said Northern Ireland was at “another difficult point in politics … it happens to coincide with 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed” but he was “hopeful … that in the weeks and months ahead we will see a return to devolved government and a functioning Assembly in Northern Ireland again”.

He said there was a need to “give the DUP in particular the time and space that they’ve asked for” to consider the Windsor Framework, but said the visit by US president Joe Biden to Ireland next week would “encourage” a return to power-sharing.

Mr Coveney said “we have to work hard … to rebuild relationships that have been damaged, trust that’s been broken over the last number of years, predominantly linked to the tensions around Brexit and its fallout for the island of Ireland, North and South.”