Dublin always insisted Sinn Fein hold power in Northern Ireland, and so boosted them in the Republic

Sinn Fein will almost certainly not have the largest number of seats, because it only fielded 42 candidates, about half the number that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael put up.

But last night it was confirmed that Sinn Fein had topped the poll across the Republic in terms of first preference votes.

The party took 24.5% of the vote, which was 2.3% clear of Fianna Fail and 3.6% ahead of the main party in the last Irish parliament, Fine Gael.

Almost no-one was predicting this decisive victory in terms of votes cast.

There had been an opinion poll that put them the largest party by a small fraction, but others polls assessed jointly on average had them behind the traditionally two bigger parties.

In any event, most pundits thought that all the opinion polls were over-stating the Sinn Fein vote, as they had done in 2016 by a margin of more than 3%.

That did not happen this time.

It is by a distance the best result Sinn Fein has ever had in the Republic of Ireland.

It will be hard for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael now to stick to their pledge not to go into coalition with SF.

While it is important to note that three quarters of Irish voters still reject Sinn Fein, there is no avoiding the fact that this result changes the landscape there — and here.

It is hard not to share Jim Allister’s assessment that Sinn Fein in power at Stormont, as has been an unwavering Dublin demand since the 1990s, and latterly an unwavering London one too (never more so than under the disgraceful pressure applied by Julian Smith to capitulate to republican blackmail amid the abandoning of the three strands), sanitised them.

Naturally having them in power was always going to make a party that has consistently been allowed to operate outside democratic norms look respectable to swathes of electors.