Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Finance – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:30 pm on 8 June 2021.
Conor Murphy
Sinn Féin
2:30,
8 June 2021
The commission, like the council, is off doing some of its work at the moment. I am sure that the Member, and others in the Finance Committee, will be engaging with it in due course. As he acknowledged in one of his earlier contributions, there are some very experienced and able people involved in both the council and the commission. We wanted to give both bodies the space to engage and establish independence — particularly the council, which has an ongoing remit for reporting — so that they did not just become tools of the Department that do its bidding. From the people involved, the Member will know that that will not be the case. I look forward to them coming back to us with initial findings. The time frame that we have given them for the provision of a report is the end of the year. It will be for an incoming Executive to act on that report, but it will inform a debate that will bring us beyond the annual Budget cycle into the future and the opportunities for raising our own revenue.