SDLP LEADER Mark Durkan wants the Stormont Assembly to be recalled in a bid to force the Executive to meet.
Concerned that meetings scheduled for early and late July were not held, Mr Durkan said: "In circumstances where the Executive was failing to meet, where meetings were being cancelled, and where the business of the Executive was silting up, there could be a case for the Assembly reconvening," he said.
When the Assembly went into recess it did so with the expectation that the Executive would continue to meet to deal with a range of serious issues, he added.
"Despite what Sinn Féin and the DUP would have us believe in relation to the devolution of justice and policing and Maze stadium, business is not being done at Executive level." The Foyle MP added that a reconvened Assembly would "question and challenge" why the Executive is not meeting.
"Assembly members are elected to hold the Executive to account. We must set out clearly why the Executive needs to meet and we will also put forward constructive ideas on what the Executive can do to help."
He asked: "Is this the best devolution can deliver? People are understandably coming to the conclusion that the Executive is approaching an ostrich approach."
The SDLP leader received qualified support from Ulster Unionist deputy leader Danny Kennedy.
"Quite a number of Assembly members are abroad on holiday or are on leave at the minute, and we would have to consider whether it would be justified bringing back from holidays at public expense MLAs from various parts of the world and what benefit that would actually have," he said, "though we do share the SDLP concerns."
"Three months [ from the last Executive meeting to next scheduled meeting in mid-September] is a very considerable period of inactivity and doesn't represent the process hard-pressed taxpayers expect from this Assembly."
Alliance leader David Ford said his party shared the SDLP's concerns, but he doubted if a recall would succeed in forcing the Executive to meet.
"The DUP and Sinn Féin hold the majority in the Assembly as well as the Executive, so I don't see how it could contribute anything to resolving the crisis and it would only divert responsibility from the Executive by recalling the Assembly," he said.
Both Alliance and the SDLP pressed sports Minister Gregory Campbell yesterday to make clear his policy on a shared sports stadium to be located at the former Maze prison site. Mr Campbell, who replaced the sacked Edwin Poots in June, promised clarity on the issue in the early autumn.
"Now I'm the Minister, I need to have responsibility for the advancement of sport in Northern Ireland per se," he said.
"That's football, that's rugby and it's Gaelic and the other sports. But those three main sports were the sports which were going to avail of any new stadium.
"I haven't yet come to a conclusion, but I'm going to in the next few weeks and I'm then going to make an announcement in the Assembly in the autumn."