Mr. John Shine:

This is something that has arisen many times over the years. The principal motivation is to make it easier to set up a co-operative. There has been quite a lot of feedback from stakeholders on this issue, much of it looking for the number to be reduced from seven down to three because they consider that seven is simply too high a bar for smaller social enterprises, farmers' markets and so on. The main motivation is to make it easier to operate a co-op. That said, there is absolutely nothing to stop a co-operative from having as many founding members as it wants to. For certain sectors and certain representative bodies, having that as a requirement of membership can apply. The Deputy mentioned ICOS and historically, their members would have been larger co-operatives in the dairy and wider agricultural area. If ICOS or any other umbrella organisation wants a higher threshold and decides that seven is appropriate, then it can put that into its model rules for its members to adopt. We are saying that the minimum is three but if the nature of the activity or the sector is such that more might make sense, then they are fully entitled to do that. It is this notion of enabling co-ops to reflect in their own rules whatever their own circumstances are. One of the arguments for the seven was to provide economies of scale, in a sense, that one would get more people who would bring heft to the running of the co-op. Equally, however, there are those who maintain that it is too high a bar. We are also conscious that across Europe, the norm is three.

In some situations, it is even fewer than that. We consider three to be a co-op friendly number but for those who are not comfortable with it or who want more, they are fully entitled to do that if they wish.