The British government is planning to cut the pay of members of Northern Ireland’s parliament in its latest attempt to break a political deadlock that has left the region with no government for 20 months, a government source said.
The executive – a central plank of its 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of sectarian violence – has been frozen since Irish nationalists Sinn Fein pulled out in January 2017, saying they were not being treated as equal partners by the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Repeated attempts to break the deadlock have failed.
Britain will cut the pay of Northern Ireland deputies by 7,000 pounds from November and by a further 6,000 pounds from February if no agreement is reached, the source said.