Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

I will briefly reflect on the Chairman's comments on the importance of rates for the retail sector and small businesses. We have already spoken of many of the other cost issues. Our main request of this committee is to see if we can achieve a structure through which we get better Government response and reaction to all these concerns. We think there has been extensive diagnosis of the competitiveness challenges and identifying where we are out of line with others in doing business, such as the reports of the National Competitiveness Council. What we have not seen is a response to these or a reaction. We seek a whole-of-Government approach with a single point of accountability delivered through an action plan format that clearly assigns responsibility for all the individual responses. We do not have that at the moment, and as long as that continues, we will be back here discussing the same cost issues in three or five years' time. We urge the committee to look at this.