The SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, has launched the party's "Direct Rule Watch" to try to ensure key policy initiatives proposed by the suspended Executive and Assembly are fully implemented by the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, and his four ministers.
Mr Durkan queried how a Northern Ireland Office ministerial team of five ministers could cope with all their executive demands, when under devolution a First and Deputy First Minister, 10 ministers, two junior ministers, Assembly committees and back-up staff were engaged in the day-to-day governance of Northern Ireland.
He suggested these ministers would be overburdened and would rely too heavily on their civil servants. This would be in contrast to devolution, when ministers took the lead in dictating and carrying out policy, he said.
He complained that £141 million of extra money due to be allocated to departments, including health and education, was frozen under the new regime.
The purpose of "Direct Rule Watch" would be to hold the NIO ministers to account. Ministerial actions would be regularly monitored by the SDLP and ministers and civil servants challenged to ensure they were implanting already agreed policy.
"We want to make sure that direct rule doesn't mean a total shutdown of accountability," said Mr Durkan.
On a similar theme, the Ulster Unionist chairman of the Assembly's public accounts committee, Mr Billy Bell, insisted that despite suspension and the transfer of this watchdog role to Westminster, he would continue to press for proper accountability in Northern Ireland affairs.
"It is important that departments understand that we have not gone away.
"I am eagerly awaiting a settlement to the latest political crisis in order that we can continue carrying out the jobs we were elected to do," he added.
Also lamenting the return to direct rule was Mr Richard Gordon, head of the public affairs company, Stormont Strategy. He said that a straw poll conducted among Assembly members revealed an alarming lack of information, bordering on obstruction, in attempts by elected representatives to track plans and progress within government departments.
"MLAs have told us of the near impossibility of getting clear answers to questions about the progress of legislation, of NIO priorities, of plans to carry forward measures which they had initiated in the Assembly, and of possible changes to spending plans," he said.
"Where formerly the chair of an Assembly committee, or a party spokesperson on a particular subject, could expect full co-operation from senior officials in departments, that has now largely disappeared.
"Even the committee clerks, who are still in post, find themselves blocked," Mr Gordon added.
"It is simply not good enough that we should all have to rely on questions put down in the House of Commons by MPs, and the odd press release, as the only way of dragging information out of ministers, who with limited time each week in Northern Ireland, and with perhaps three departments to oversee, can only be expected to devote less than 10 hours per week to each.
"The power has reverted to the civil servants, on whom they must out of necessity depend, and that cannot be right," Mr Gordon said.
