Stormont's First Minister has accused Sinn Fein of trying to bully unionists into a deal on devolving policing and justice powers by threatening to bring down the powersharing administration.

Democratic Unionist leader Peter Robinson said republican warnings of dire political consequences if an agreement wasn't reached before Christmas was an attempt to create a crisis when none existed.

Mr Robinson fired the latest salvo in the increasingly bitter political wrangle over transferring law and order responsibilities from Westminster as Assembly members passed the final stage of legislation that will create the new Justice Ministry once devolution is given the green light.

Making clear that his party was unequivocally behind devolution, Mr Robinson blamed his partners in the powersharing administration of deliberately destabilising the institutions just because they hadn't got their way.

He said: "Sinn Fein have now told us that the process is in "meltdown", it is in "free-fall" and now they say unless their demands are met there will be "political consequences". "Sinn Fein is creating the very instability that many people believe is an obstacle to devolving more powers.

"The DUP will not be bullied or threatened into taking any decision it cannot embrace on logical and rational grounds; they insist on dealing with the outstanding issues and refuse to close a deal without a satisfactory outcome; the DUP keeps its manifesto pledge maintaining that devolution of policing and justice will happen only when community confidence exists."

But Sinn Fein's Raymond McCartney rejected the First Minister's remarks.

He questioned whether Mr Robinson was serious about devolution and queried his right to judge when there was community confidence given his party only represented around 20% of the overall electorate.

Sinn Fein claim the DUP leader is stalling on a deal to placate hard-line elements within in his own party and because he is scared of losing votes to Jim Allister - the leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice party that is vehemently opposed to the powersharing arrangements.

"If Mr Robinson continues to prevaricate it won't be long before he completely loses all community confidence and ends up indistinguishable from Jim Allister and the TUV as just another minority unionist party," said Mr McCartney.