For all that was said at Stormont on Friday, this is not where the real talking is happening.
Rather, Parliament Buildings was the place for the set-piece publication of Sinn Fein’s document on an Independent Panel Investigation into the RHI scheme – Michelle O’Neill emphasising that “compellability” is at the heart of those proposals.
The draft terms of reference will be scrutinised – checked to see how they fit with the demands of others for a public inquiry.
But this Stormont story has moved on in recent days – its pages recording a very public battle and political breakdown, a bust up that has left the institutions struggling to keep their feet with the focus now on the question of whether they will stand or fall.
“The whole thing is very precarious,” Alliance leader Naomi Long told this website.
“Unless one of them blinks over Arlene stepping aside, I can’t see the institutions surviving.”
There is no blinking from the DUP or Sinn Fein, and Justice Minister Claire Sugden has become trapped in this verbal brawl between Stormont’s big parties.
All of this is a million miles away from the idea of the Fresh Start, new beginnings and new politics; all of that now circled by what SDLP MP Mark Durkan called a ring of fire.
Just think about some of what has been said in recent days. Arlene Foster describing Sinn Fein in “inner turmoil” and “meltdown”. Mairtin O Muilleoir dismissing a plan from another Executive Minister Simon Hamilton as a “sticking plaster” and warning: “There will be no progress in matters political until Arlene Foster stands aside.”
O Muilleoir was speaking to Frank Mitchell on U105.
Is there to be ten more days of this – the two parties of Government talking at each other? In this battle, politics looks more broken-up than joined-up.
Now, there is some thinking and talking in the background that this Stormont row may not make it to January 16 and the return of the Assembly. At this stage, this is quiet thinking, not thinking out loudly, but a thought that has entered the frame.
On Friday, Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt suggested the DUP and Sinn Fein “look to have run out of road”.
“On that basis, why wait ten days?” he asked.
He knows, of course, that the waiting time will be a decision for others.
The button that Sinn Fein has to push is politically nuclear – one that would throw politics into the territory of an election.
But an election to what?
Back to this starting point – the standoff over this issue of the First Minister stepping aside.
It is the knot that cannot be untied. An election on its own will change the numbers but not the issues.
At some point, there will be more talks – a negotiation – that will be tasked with achieving a Fresher Start Agreement.
RHI will be on the table, reconciliation, Irish language, legacy and other issues – this the uphill climb facing a broken Executive.
