Ms Teodora Corcoran:

We have extended the type of founding members of a co-operative. Under current legislation, companies can become a member of a co-operative, just not from the get-go. We are now giving a company the opportunity to become a member from the get-go.

We are aware, however, that there is always the danger that a company, particularly an investor, might want to call the shots, so we are providing in the rules that if a company has an investor member, it will have to provide specific rules about that investor member. This is now allowed throughout Europe. The purists would not allow it, but we know that co-operatives generally have issues attracting finance, so we thought we would not curtail them by not making provision for them to have investor members.