DEMOCRATIC UNIONIST (DUP) Arlene Foster took over as Northern Ireland’s caretaker first minister yesterday, vowing to act as a policy “gatekeeper.”

Serving Finance Minister Ms Foster assumed the role in the power-sharing Stormont executive after DUP leader Peter Robinson and three of his ministerial colleagues resigned.

The Smaller Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) withdrew from the executive two weeks ago.

Ms Foster called her Sinn Fein and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) ministers “rogues” and “renegades” in comments to the BBC.

“I have been placed there as a gatekeeper to make sure that Sinn Fein and the SDLP ministers don’t take actions that will damage Northern Ireland and the unionist community,” she said.

Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said politicians had “six weeks” to save the executive.

The constitutional crisis was triggered by accusations that the Provisional IRA had reactivated following last month’s murder of dissident republican Kevin McGuigan.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has pursued the line that Mr McGuigan’s shooting was in revenge for that of alleged IRA commander Gerard “Jock” Davison in May.

Sinn Fein northern chairman Bobby Storey became the latest — and most senior — republican to be arrested in connection with the killing on Wednesday.

But late on Thursday he was released from police custody unconditionally.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said his release “underlines the contrived nature of the current crisis in the political institutions in the North.”

He reiterated his “grave concern about the nature in which the murder of two men has been exploited and also at the way the current difficulties have developed in the last few weeks.”

Mr Adams echoed Mr McGuinness’s warning there was a short window of opportunity to rescue the peace process, saying the crisis was “a consequence of the inter-unionist electoral rivalry between the UUP and DUP.”

He slammed UUP leader Mike Nesbitt’s “cynical actions,” saying: “He wants to score points against the DUP and he will exploit any situation, use any opportunity, even one as grave as the murder of two people, Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan, to do this.”