The deal to break the Stormont deadlock could be built on unsteady foundations.

With Peter Robinson sticking to his bottom-line of not giving a date for devolving policing and justice, there is the look of a sticking plaster job about the DUP-Sinn Fein agreement.

While the two main parties have defied the critics to find a way through the impasse, for now, there is a feeling they may be storing up more trouble for further down the line.

Mr Robinson has cleverly avoided getting himself stuck on the hook of a date.

But the process of moving forward is now hanging on some sort of understanding that the transfer of powers will happen within months – not political lifetimes.

And this throws up a quandary for the DUP.

With a European election due in June, and Jim Allister snapping at the party’s heels, can the DUP afford to get into a selling exercise with the unionist public on devolving law and order responsibilities.

Will that not be fertile ground for the TUV to take root upon?

Won’t that potentially jeopardise what remains of the DUP’s hardline?

And how will it go down internally?

The DUP leadership may decide it has enough in the bag – no Sinn Fein minister, not Sinn Fein role in appointing the judiciary etc – to go for devolution.

But if it cannot do this because of the TUV, and an election, then does it not risk another stand-off with Sinn Fein – and where does that leave the Stormont experiment and Peter Robinson’s leadership; lurching from crisis to crisis.

A serious fight with either republicans or the TUV lies ahead.

It remains a high-wire act for the DUP, which will also be open to claims of history repeating, if (as in 2007, when it ran an election campaign and then surprised everyone by agreeing to Sinn Fein power-sharing immediately after) it ventures into the poll with the policing question still hanging over it.

There are a few twists and turns yet before policng and justice is sorted.