Mr. Glyn Roberts:

Regarding the flooding, Mr. Neill and I were active in trying to get support to many of the businesses in Mr. Hazzard's constituency and Newry. If we had a minister with responsibility for infrastructure in place we could have done a better job in getting help to those members. Quite frankly, the money on offer does not cut the mustard. It was almost insulting that it was not new money but was re-profiled money from elsewhere in the budget.

We have to make sure we do so much more to get that help, particularly at this time of year, because for many of those businesses in retail and in hospitality, Christmas in the harvest time. It is when they make the most significant profit, which sustains the business throughout the year. If they cannot open or are running subpar, it means that those businesses just will not survive, so we need to go further and faster. As the committee will recall, we were trying to get the whole movement on rates. The rates hardship fund in Northern Ireland is simply not fit for purpose.

On Mr. Hazzard's broader point about town centres, people sometimes overcomplicate what we mean by 21st-century high streets. It is not rocket science because successful high streets are fun, family-friendly destinations, or they should be, to which people want to come back time and time again. There are ecosystems of lots of different types of business. Retail and hospitality, obviously, are big players in that, but it is about making them fun, family-friendly destinations with a good range of retail and hospitality but also service provision. Belfast city centre is very slowly becoming a living community where more and more people are now living. In many respects that will create an entirely new community in Belfast city centre that has not been there since before the start of the Troubles. That is encouraging.

On the point about green technology, one of the things we were exploring with Conor Murphy, when he was finance minister, is how we could use the rating system we have in Northern Ireland to incentivise business investment. One of the things we put forward was that if a business invests in significant green technology and sustainability, it would then be able to claim maybe six months' rates relief or be exempt from paying rates for six months as an incentive to change its business model, become more sustainable and invest in green technology. Refrigeration for a lot of our members is probably the most expensive cost they have. Again, technology in that area in terms of sustainability is just not there in an affordable way. It is about using our rating system as an enabler rather than a disabler. There are lots of other incentives we can use with the rating system to do that. Coming back to the point about high streets, independent retailers have such an important role to play in that. The successful town centres we will see the length and breadth of this island are where independent retailers and hospitality businesses and small businesses are offering something different and distinctive from the big multiples. There are so many good examples of that in every part of this island.