The Northern Ireland Secretary has said that salaries paid to MLAs may be stopped unless progress is made towards restoring devolution by the summer.
Peter Hain said he may take the move to stop salaries and allowances if no real movement is made towards returning the Stormont Assembly.
The Northern Ireland Secretary said MLAs were getting Stg£32,000 (€46,671) salaries for a job which they will not take responsibility for doing.
"I'm not giving a particular month, but I am saying that if we haven't seen progress by the summer, the first decision I'm going to have to take is over continued payment of salaries and also allowances," Mr Hain told BBC Radio Ulster's Inside Politics programme.
"You have got more being paid in costs, in legitimate costs for staff, for the services they provide, for travel and subsistence and all the rest of it, as well £32,000 salaries for assembly members elected to a job which they won't take responsibility for doing."
In his New Year's message, Mr Hain had warned there would be little point in having elections to an Assembly in 2007 if there was no meaningful devolution. He said unionists needed to know republicans were serious about their commitments to totally lawful means. But he also acknowledged that nationalists wanted to know unionists were serious about sharing power on a genuinely equitable basis.
The British and Irish governments' bid to revive devolution has been complicated in recent weeks by the dramatic collapse of a spying case against three men accused of intelligence gathering for republicans at Stormont in 2002 and the revelation that one of them, Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson, was working as an agent for the British intelligence services within the party
After the power-sharing executive collapsed in October 2002, the House of Lords agreed Assembly members would continue to receive a reduced salary of almost £32,000 as they held representative duties.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said the party had made it clear to both governments that the current suspension of the Stormont Assembly was not tenable.
On Mr Hain's threats to withdraw salaries, Mr Adams said : "You can't have political institutions voted for by people on both states in this island being kept indefinitely in mothballs.
"So insofar as this signals genuine efforts to get the process and the institutions back in place we welcome that and we work with both governments and the Taoiseach has also made it clear the government's decision in this, we have worked with both governments to get the political institutions back in place."
Asked whether he agreed with Mr Hain's comments on freezing salaries unless progress is seen, Mr Adams said the party had given a clear signal in private discussions with both governments that they were not going to wait indefinitely.
"It is just not tenable that you have three-years of suspension of what almost amounts to a farce. Either we have working institutions or we don't," he said.
PA