BRITAIN’S Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley insisted today that her country’s Prime Minister Theresa May was right to visit the colony while sensitive power-sharing talks were taking place.

A tentative deal fell apart 48 hours after Ms May visited Belfast.

Even the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which Ms May bribed with £1 billion to prop up her administration in London, criticised her decision to visit.

DUP leader Arlene Foster said the visit was a “distraction,” while party colleague Simon Hamilton MLA said it disrupted progress that was being made.

However British minister Ms Bradley, visiting a shopping centre in Belfast, reasserted her country’s claim to the north of Ireland and said her leader could travel wherever she judged to be part of her dominion.

“The Prime Minister is the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is absolutely right that she should come and visit Northern Ireland,” Ms Bradley said.

Sinn Fein had earlier pinned the collapse of the latest round of talks squarely on the DUP.

“We understood we had landed on a respectful, workable accommodation,” party president Mary Lou McDonald said.

Ms McDonald said the agreement would have reviewed the “petition of concern,” a legislative device meant to prevent discrimination. It has been used by the DUP to block corruption investigations, and by Sinn Fein to veto welfare cuts.

Northern Ireland has not had a government for 13 months, largely it seems because the DUP reject Sinn Fein demands for an Irish Language Act.