A few days after Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were elected to the roles of first and deputy first minister – May 8 2007 – Stephen Nolan asked me what I was hoping for over the next few years.

His question was on the back of a piece I had written, before the new executive had been appointed, in which I had argued that the DUP/Sinn Féin deal, unlikely though it seemed just months earlier, would probably be the last chance of establishing stable, genuinely cooperative government in Northern Ireland.

It was the sheer unexpectedness of the deal – although I had suggested in January 2004, shortly after the Donaldson/Foster defections to the DUP, that there was nowhere else for the party to go – which fuelled my unusual levels of hope.

The risks Paisley and McGuinness were taking were, in fact and extent, far greater than the risks taken by Trimble and Hume in 1998.

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The DUP and Sinn Féin were polar opposites, as were their support bases.

So, I reckoned that the sheer scale of the risks both parties were taking suggested they were serious about working together.

Yet it soon became clear, particularly from the DUP side of the relationship, that the Chuckle........

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