North: Firms fear rates introduction

Northern companies could shed 30,000 jobs if British government plans to make them pay rates are implemented, an industrial lobby group claimed today.

The Northern Ireland Manufacturing Focus Group announced plans to stage a rally against the phasing out of industrial de-rating in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall on April 25 and claimed they would bus in one thousand people to register their opposition.

Group spokesperson Basil McCrea claimed: “We believe this is the biggest crisis to hit the industrial sector in Northern Ireland in the last decade.

“Our estimates show that 30,000 jobs are at risk and it is going to wipe out all the gains that have been made over the last 10 years.”

Northern businesses had been exempt from paying rates until last year, when manufacturers received bills asking them to pay 15% of their full rate liability.

That is set to rise next month to a quarter of the full rates bill for their property.

However, the Northern Ireland Manufacturing Focus Group argued that if plans to make them pay the full rates bill are introduced, it will significantly eat into profits and effect companies’ ability to invest in their workforce and research and development.

Orla Corr of the McAvoy Group said: “(British) government is encouraging us to innovate and be creative.

“Northern Ireland, out of the 12 regions, is number 11 when it comes to spending on research and development.

“In order for us to remain competitive, we will have to invest in research and development and developing new markets.

“We are not going to have the capability for that as we are going to be hit by a rates bill.”

The group today called on the British government to cap the rates liability at 25% of the full bill.

Niall Irwin of Irwin’s Bakery said the imposition of rates had to be considered in the context of fuel rises and significant electricity price rises for business.

“Northern Ireland industry cannot afford this tax,” he said.

“It is not saying it will not pay. It wants to pay.

“However, there is a limit to what it can afford.”

Former CBI Northern Ireland chairman Chris Gibson warned that in the food industry, where many companies operate on a cross-border basis, it was not hard to work out where firms may invest once they compared the economic advantages in the Irish Republic and the North.