Professor Tom Cooney:

If I may make a point of information before Mr. O'Sullivan continues, a major challenge for social enterprise is that if one creates a social business, there is nowhere to register it. I had a number of queries recently from people in the Liberties and elsewhere in Dublin, and even beyond Dublin, about setting up a network. They might have a small business in a neighbourhood and they want to know what they should register as in terms of legal status. They do not want to register as a company because it is too complicated. They might be a not for profit charity but they have to go through the Revenue process for that. It is not a co-operative, and they are not self-employed. There is a difficulty in that there is nowhere for them to get a legal status.