Negotiations on forming a government in Northern Ireland failed late last week after weeks of intense talks, the Associated Press reported.

Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster said the talks with the Irish Nationalist Shin-Fein Party to rebuild the government that broke up a year ago were unsuccessful. The Northern Ireland government collapsed in January 2017 amid a scandal surrounding an ill-fated renewable energy scheme that jeopardized the sharing of power, a key achievement of the 1998 peace treaty, ending decades of violence.

The two parties blame each other for the deadlock and the dispute over the energy project has expanded to wider cultural and political issues.