The co-leader of the Social Democrats, Róisín Shortall, has said government formation talks will continue until Easter.

Ms Shortall said her party met a delegation from Sinn Féin this morning and discussed a number of different policy areas.

She said they would meet Sinn Féin representatives again on Thursday.

Ms Shortall said decisions around the spending of public money must be taken in an open and transparent, fair manner.

"Too often public money has been used as some kind of political slush fund. We want to see a system of objective resource allocations across all Government departments and agencies," she said.

Asked how long the political limbo would last, she said it would be some time around Easter before a Government would be formed.

She said it was early days and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael still had not had policy discussions yet.

The party's other co-leader, Catherine Murphy, said it was crystal ball territory and the party would continue to hold talks with parties.

She said the meeting with Sinn Féin was the first time there was detailed discussions on different policy areas.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael has resumed discussions with the Green Party following lengthy talks yesterday.

Fine Gael maintains that these are talks about policy, but not about government formation.

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A delegation from Fianna Fáil met Independent TDs today.

However, the Rural Independent group and the Regional Independent group said they did not have any meetings planned.