Published Tuesday, 15 June 2010
In March 2008, the Executive agreed a cost-cutting plan to reduce the number of local authorities by 2011 but, on Monday night, Environment minister Edwin Poots announced ministers had failed to agree a way forward.
The vote to proceed with 11 councils next year failed to secure cross-community support despite a majority vote.
Sinn Fein, Alliance and SDLP ministers all voted in favour of the 11 'supercouncil' model, but the three DUP ministers voted against.
Mr Poots said the current proposals rejected methods of collaboration, which could have saved £400m, but claimed measures to improve cooperation could be taken with or without a reduction in the number of councils.
"There was a discussion on the matter and there were two different views; one was to proceed, the other was that time left available to proceed with this was not enough and there were issues that weren't well enough tied down", Mr Poots told UTV after the meeting.
"Every time we made an argument to go ahead with this, it appears that the DUP were making an argument not do it", Regional Development minister Conor Murphy told UTV.
Almost £10m has already been spent preparing for the changes.
The Northern Ireland Local Government Association said the failure to implement the plan was "not acceptable".
"This decision by the Minister and the Executive is clearly not acceptable on any level. The Executive needs to know that local government has supported this programme at every step of the way, in spite of the Minister's obstacles", Councillor John Mathews, President of the Association said.
"This is a wasted opportunity to modernise and make significant savings for the rate payer".
"This now seems to have been wasted effort and will leave many feeling that the Minister has let them down".
Alliance MLA Stephen Farry has expressed his party's frustration at the failure of the Stormont Executive to proceed with the reform of local government after a process of eight years.
"At a time of great financial pressure people will rightly be asking why this major reform process of the public sector has stalled", Mr Farry said.
SDLP Local Government spokeswoman Helen Quigley said the DUP and Sinn Fein must shoulder the blame for the Executive failure to agree a way forward for the Review of Public Administration.
"The DUP/Sinn Féin failure to reach agreement on this issue has simply turned the matter into a catastrophic multi-million pound shambles," Mrs Quigley said.