By Amanda Ferguson
BELFAST (Reuters) -Britain will announce on Wednesday it intends to push back a deadline to hold a new election in Northern Ireland by six weeks to early March, with the option of extending it by a further six weeks, a source briefed on the plan said.
Northern Ireland has been without a functioning devolved government since February when the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party began a boycott of the regional assembly in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Britain’s minister for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, said last month he was obliged to call a new election within 12 weeks as the deadline for forming a power-sharing government after a May election had passed.
But Heaton-Harris, said on Friday he would not call another election before the end of this year and would outline in parliament on Wednesday how he intended to proceed beyond that.
The source told Reuters Heaton-Harris would also announce plans to impose a budget on Northern Ireland after caretaker ministers were forced to step down last month.
Heaton-Harris will also cut the pay of members of the Northern Ireland Assembly by one-third until a power-sharing government is formed, the source said.
The British government’s Northern Ireland Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson, writing by Padraic Halpin, editing by Elizabeth Piper)
