Talks on the possible formation of government are likely to continue without any conclusion at least until Easter, the Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall has said, following talks with Sinn Féin on Tuesday morning.

Asked how long the current round of talks could take, she told reporters the “the likelihood is that we’re talking about sometime around Easter”.

“I mean, it is early days yet,” she said, pointing to the 74 days it took to form a government in 2016, “so we are still in the early phases of that”.

“We’ll just have to wait and see what evolves,” she added.

Both women said they had useful talks with Sinn Féin on Tuesday, which would continue on Thursday. The Social Democrats is due to have a full-day session with the Green Party on Wednesday.

Ms Shortall said that the Social Democrats wanted to see more transparency in public spending, claiming that “too often public money has been used as some kind of political slush fund”.

“We want to see a system of objective resource allocation across all government departments,” she said.

Ms Shortall and Ms Murphy reiterated the party’s position that they would not enter government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, but would consider serving in government with one of the two parties and Sinn Féin.