To ask the Minister of Finance and Personnel whether her Department plans to implement the recommendations of the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association 15 point plan for cutting the costs to businesses.

As the Member is aware, my Department recently launched a twelve week consultation exercise on a wide ranging Business Rates review. This will consider the issue of business rates within a wider strategic context. Stakeholders such as NIIRTA are invited to provide input on the direction of business rates in Northern Ireland and I expect they will put forward the rating policy proposals set out in their 15 point plan.

This review is not to raise more money from businesses. We all want to keep rates as low and as acceptable for ratepayers throughout Northern Ireland but we still need to get the money in to pay for the public services that our businesses and citizens need; such as our health, education, policing and roads systems.

I note that 8 or 9 of the 15 points in NIIRTA’s plan relate to measures designed to reduce rates for its members and these can be carefully considered as part and parcel of the review. There are no suggestions, however, as to how they can be implemented without jeopardising our public finances. Perhaps this will emerge during the consultation, as rates reductions for one group inevitably mean that some else has to pay more, if our public services are not to suffer.

One final point I would like to make. NIIRTA’s 15 point plan states that 45% of our members’ rate bills were increased by between 20-200% following the Revaluation. This is far from the case. The impact of the Revaluation has been widely publicised this year by LPS, as you will be aware from the answers you have been given to a whole series of Assembly questions.