FIRST Minister Arlene Foster has said questions about the British government's reaction to the coronavirus crisis should come later.
The DUP leader was responding to claims that Prime Minister Boris Johnson ignored early warnings and missed emergency Cobra meetings in the early days of the pandemic.
"I think it is important to say that this is something we have been engaged with since January," Mrs Foster told the BBC.
"The health secretary in England held his first meeting on the 6th of January, our own health minister attended those Cobra meetings, which the health secretary chaired and that was brought back to us in the executive.
"We had a Cobra update at all of our executive meetings.
"Those Cobra meetings are designed to be chaired by the appropriate cabinet secretary, because it is called the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms.
"There will be a lot of time to back over who knew what, when and were all the appropriate actions taken, but at the moment we're focused on saving lives and making sure we have an economy to come back to and that's the role we have to fulfil."
Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said she was on the record as saying that the British government had been to slow to act.
"If you look at what happened in Britain they were slow to close down public gatherings and slow to close down schools, we took our own decisions here and thankfully, very gratefully, we seem to be able to manage through this first wave," she said.
"I'm on the record as having said I think the British government was too slow to act and I think as a local assembly elected by local people we take decisions that are in the best interest of the people here who we serve.
"Whatever is in the interest of the people that is what we in the executive will do".
Asked how the relationship between the two politicians was developing during the health crisis, Ms O'Neill said: "Because we are in crisis, we are in abnormal times and all working very well together and all trying to do our very best".
"We all as an executive have had to work more closely than we ever have previously, the executive itself is meeting three times a week and myself and Arlene do a meeting every morning," she added.
Mrs Foster said: "We're in a strange situation because as Michelle said we are working much more closely, we are in very close contact, but we are also remotely working together, but at the same time determined to do what is right for the people of Northern Ireland."
