A public attitude survey has pointed to tolerance of direct rule from London and disenchantment with the Assembly's record among the electorate in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Life and Times survey has found that only 19 per cent felt Northern Ireland fared badly with direct rule ministers in place of the power-sharing executive.
Some 12 per cent of the 1,800 adults questioned felt that the direct rule arrangement in place while Stormont is suspended worked very well.
A further 60 per cent felt it was neither particularly good nor bad. Responses in each category were evenly divided among Catholics and Protestants. Asked what their response would be if the Assembly were abolished altogether, only 37 per cent said they would be sorry.
Of the remainder, 50 per cent said they would not mind too much either way, and 7 per cent said they would be pleased.
Responses to this question did highlight attitude differences between Catholics and Protestants.
Just 2 per cent of Catholics would be pleased with abolition of the Stormont Assembly compared to 11 per cent of Protestants. However, of the 50 per cent who said they would not mind if the institutions were to be scrapped, 41 per cent were Catholic.
The findings appear to signal a weariness with the political process in Northern Ireland among voters, especially following the prolonged negotiations following suspension of Stormont in October 2002 and the on-off Assembly election last year which was finally conducted in November after two postponements.
Turnout in that election was down on the first Assembly election in 1998. Just over 50 per cent of the electorate voted in this month's EU election, a figure higher than many analysts predicted.
There was further bad news for locally-elected representatives in favour of devolution.
Asked if they thought the Assembly's record was a positive one, one third of respondents of all religions said it had achieved nothing at all.
Nearly half said the Assembly had achieved little and only 12 per cent thought its record was a positive one.
Protestants were in general more negative about the Assembly's record.
A similar question posed in the previous Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, conducted in 2002-3 found that more people thought more highly of the Assembly then than they do now.
More than a quarter of respondents then said the Assembly had achieved a lot and 51 per cent said it had done some good work.
Protestants then believed more strongly that the Assembly had achieved a lot, with 17 per cent agreeing, compared to just 6 per cent now. The survey also points to a perceived imbalance on who has benefited most since the Belfast Agreement was signed in 1998.
The results found that just 32 per cent of respondents believed that both nationalists and unionists had benefited equally since Good Friday 1998.
A larger number, 33 per cent, believed that nationalists benefited "a lot more" than unionists, while a further 15 per cent thought that nationalists have benefited "a little more" than their unionist equivalents.
Just 2 per cent thought that unionists had benefited either "a little more" or "a lot more" than nationalists.
It appears that the DUP has tapped into this apparent negative attitude among unionist voters to its electoral gain.
It further appears that there is a diminishing appetite for immediate restoration of the Stormont institutions - which again is reflected in the DUP's current stance.
On the other hand, both Sinn Féin and the SDLP are insistent that the agreement be implemented in full as quickly as possible.
The survey was carried out by Ark which is jointly supported by the North's two universities, Queen's University, Belfast and the University of Ulster.
The annual survey is carried out between October and February every 12 months and results are now being made public.