Mr. Ruairí McGinley:

At committee level, we accepted the mandate to accept the local property tax. I would prefer not to comment on it because different political parties have their views. By and large, the reality is that the funding is now available and the general feeling is it has a certain legitimacy.

The first proposal we made was for an independent appraisal of local authority needs and resources and hence the validity of the baseline funding model for local authorities, which has been mentioned a few times. That appraisal needs to be conducted at an early opportunity.