Stormont's First Minister Peter Robinson has accused Sinn Féin of holding a gun to the head of the people of Northern Ireland.
In one of most stinging rebukes of his political partners in the troubled powersharing administration to date, the DUP leader said the republican party was abdicating its moral responsibility to help people struggling in the face of the economic downturn.
Sinn Féin cabinet members have refused to attend executive meetings for four months.
They say they will not return to the table until a number of outstanding issues -such as a timetable for the devolution of policing and justice and legislation to protect Irish speakers -have been resolved.
The party’s deputy leader and Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, has accused the DUP of failing to administer power on the basis of equality.
Mr Robinson rejected these claims tonight and accused republicans of bullyboy tactics.
In a thinly veiled warning he assured the party he would not stand for the behaviour much longer.
“Sinn Féin cannot hold a gun to the head of the population and state that until their demands are met they will make the people suffer,” he said.
He added: “Through their destructive and self-seeking tactics of obstructing the properly constituted work of the Northern Ireland Executive, Sinn Féin are undermining community confidence in the institutions.
“They risk bringing about a state of disillusionment within the wider community that may prove permanent and irrevocable. They need to realise that whereas threatening and blackmail tactics like this might have worked for them in the past with others at the helm of Unionism, they will not succeed now."
“People should know and understand that I am familiar with those who employ bullying tactics and I react very badly to them.”
Mr Robinson was speaking at an event in an Orange hall in Omagh.
“At a time when people are suffering and looking to their elected leaders to help them, it is obscene that Sinn Fein is preventing the Northern Ireland Executive from fulfilling its legal functions in the fullest and most far-reaching way,” he said.
“This abnormal situation cannot go on if devolution is to maintain the confidence of the people.”
The First Minister said he was prepared to address the issues concerning Sinn Féin but stressed the need for executive business to resume while negotiations took place.
“We have a job of work to do on behalf of all the people of Northern Ireland,” he said.
A spokesman for Sinn Féin dismissed Mr Robinson’s remarks.
He said the DUP was failing to meet obligations it signed up to in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, which forms the basis of the current devolved institutions.
He added that the party was not going to allow Mr Robinson and his colleagues to rule with only one side of the community in mind.
“Sinn Féin will not tolerate people’s rights and entitlements to be filtered through a unionist prism,” he said.
PA