Students yesterday meet Secretary of State Theresa Villiers, who give a speech on the implementation of the Stormont House Agreement at Queen’s University

The Prime Minister and Taoiseach both signed a statement to wind up December's crunch political talks without a deal, the Secretary of State has told the Belfast Telegraph.

Theresa Villiers said she believed the threat of publishing the declaration of defeat had "helped concentrate minds" before a last-minute breakthrough led to the Stormont House Agreement just two days before Christmas.

If that deal had not been struck, the Secretary of State said she might well have been preparing for a return to direct rule from Westminster.

The statement pledged the two governments to go on trying to find a solution and would probably have raised fears in unionism that a deal might be done over their heads.

Ms Villiers was speaking as she launched an initiative to deal with disputed parades in North Belfast at Queen's University's Institute of Conflict and Transformation and Social Justice.

She gave the academic audience an account of the fraught last days of the Stormont negotiations.

The Conservative MP also revealed to the Belfast Telegraph how she had spoken to David Cameron about how to bring the talks to a close. Her Irish counterpart, Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan, had also consulted Taoiseach Enda Kenny (right).

"I had a statement announcing the wind up agreed with the Prime Minister and the same was done by Minister Flanagan with the Taoiseach. The language was carefully considered," she said.

Ms Villiers refused to hand over the statement but described its content and the thinking behind it.

"There was a risk that if the talks had ended in failure we would have an election. But the statements we were proposing to make wouldn't have referred directly to that," she said.

"We were hoping it wouldn't happen.

"We said we stood ready to help in any way we can, it was a confirmation that the British and Irish governments were very committed to trying to find a resolution to these problems even if this particular process has ended in failure without a resolution."

She added: "What we had on our side was that nobody wanted to be still there stuck in the Stormont House conference room on Christmas Eve.

"Everyone in Northern Ireland loves to bust a deadline but the experience of the Haass talks was that nobody wanted to be there on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day, or in that Christmas to New Year period."

She said that all the local parties had realised that, once the New Year was passed, it would have been "very difficult" for them to agree anything before May's general election.

After that, the Assembly is in recess, politicians go on a summer break and the marching season kicks off. "The sentiment was, 'We can't go on having the same conversation over and over again'," she said.

"There is no point in that so if that is all that is going to happen we might as well call a halt.

"That did help to concentrate minds," she continued.

"If we had not secured a successful outcome to the cross-party talks, I could well have been standing here talking to you today in the aftermath of a sudden Assembly election, and very possibly - and with huge reluctance - preparing for a return to direct rule.

"And let nobody be in any doubt that the collapse of devolution would have been a disastrous backward step for Northern Ireland and all that has been achieved in the 20 years since the start of the peace process," she told the seminar yesterday.​

Belfast Telegraph