Sinn Fein, once seen as little more than the mouthpiece of the Irish Republican Army, passed another electoral landmark on Monday, taking advantage of unionist divisions to top the poll for the first time in a Northern Ireland election.

The European parliament election returned Sinn Fein’s Bairbre de Brun, with 26 per cent of the vote, Jim Nicholson, the veteran Ulster Conservative and Unionist MEP and Diane Dodds, of the Democratic Unionists.