The government has been accused of rendering a Stormont committee “impotent” after failing to alert members to two new EU laws.
The new and updated environmental regulations have now come into force.
The delay means assembly members (MLAs) were not able to fully examine the impact of the new laws in Northern Ireland.
They were also unable to deploy the Stormont brake to suspended their implementation.
The new regulations restrict the use of harmful gasses in the manufacture of refrigeration systems and ban the production and sale of ozone depleting substances.
Stormont’s Windsor Framework scrutiny committee has a set period of time to examine new EU regulations once they are published.
These new regulations were first published in February, but the cabinet office only notified the committee earlier in April.
Members were told on Thursday that the deadlines for publishing a report on the new regulations or deploying the Stormont brake to block their implementation had now passed.
Committee chairman Phillip McGuigan, of Sinn Féin, said members had rightly registered their “dissatisfaction” at the late notification by the cabinet office.
Democratic Unionist Party member David Brooks said the delay had rendered the committee “impotent” and undermined trust in the system, which was set up to scrutinise new EU laws.
Ulster Unionist committee member Steve Aiken said the unacceptable delay set a dangerous precedent and showed how the system has fallen down just months after being set up.
He added it was a “serious and significant” issue which needed to be raised with the UK EU joint committee which oversees the implementation of the Windsor Framework.
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