Mr. John Shine:

That is a very difficult question. Statistics and information on the sector are not readily available, other than by means of going into the actual returns of the industrial and provident societies. There are around 960 industrial and provident societies on the register. The number has been trending upwards slightly over the past few years. There was a high of something over 1,000 in the past ten to 15 years. The sector is relatively moribund. My understanding is that in 1910 there were 950 or so industrial and provident societies in the country. More than a century later, we have effectively the same number.

Not all of those industrial and provident societies are co-operatives and not all of them espouse the co-operative ethos. The majority would, and this would have necessitated examination of the rules of the co-operatives that are on the register. Having analysed those, our sense is that somewhere in the region of 800 industrial and provident societies would consider themselves to be co-operatives. The remainder operate under the legislation but do not espouse the co-operative ethos. There is also an unknown number of co-operatives operating under company law. As stated earlier, there are approximately 206,000 on the companies register. There are certain number of those that operate as co-operatives but we do not have a sense of the overall figure. Looking to see if they have the word "co-operative" in their names does not really give a great sense of whether they are co-operatives. As a result, we do not have hard data in that regard

We have some information on turnover and employment in the dairy sector in particular. The three main areas in which there are co-operatives are agricultural and dairy, housing and group water schemes. They are the three largest. Then there is a mix of others, some of which are very small and do not really have a commercial focus. The latter are run by volunteers, very much with a view to breaking even in the context of whatever service they provide, be it home help, a local community arts project or whatever. That is at one end of the spectrum. At the other end, we have the large-----