NORTHERN Irish First Minister Peter Robinson fulfilled his threat to resign yesterday over a political crisis centred on claims that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had reactivated.

His Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) colleague Arlene Foster will take over as Acting First Minister.

Mr Robinson’s decision came after parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly voted yesterday to reject a DUP proposal to adjourn the power-sharing institutions.

Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists voted against the proposal, which was supported by the cross-community Alliance Party.

“The decision of the (Assembly’s) business committee is a very, very clear democratic reiteration of the integrity of these institutions and of the need and the wish for these institutions to continue,” said Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.

Mr Robinson had vowed on Wednesday to lead his ministers in resignation if his proposal failed or if the British government did not then suspend the institutions.

The walkout threatened the collapse of the power-sharing Stormont Executive, a central plank of the Good Friday peace agreement.

The latest development in the Stormont crisis followed Wednesday’s arrest of former IRA prisoner and Sinn Fein northern chairman Bobby Storey, along with two other senior republicans.

They were being questioned in connection with the murder of dissident republican Kevin McGuigan in Belfast last month.

Allegations that Mr McGuigan had murdered alleged former IRA commander Gerard “Jock” Davison in May were stoked when a subsequent report by senior police officers suggested that the IRA may have been reactivated.