Mr. John Shine:

Fundamentally, a co-operative is a body corporate with limited liability. That comes with significant obligations on the directors. A director of a co-operative will have very similar responsibilities, including fiduciary responsibilities, as a director of a company. This is not a corporate-light environment because, as I said, limited liability is a privilege that comes with obligations.

On the process, and without getting into the specifics and the nitty-gritty, in general, the process is somewhat similar to setting up a company in the context of making an application to register. In a company context, that application is made to the Companies Registration Office, CRO, while in the context of a co-operative, it is registered as a co-operative. There is a unitary office with separate statutory functions. At present, the CRO and the Registry of Friendly Societies are headed by the same individual but they are two statutory offices. They share office staff, IT and so on and so forth, but the process in both cases is an application to the registrar. The applicant needs to satisfy the registrar that the co-operative ethos is being fulfilled. The applicant submits its rules to the registrar, who then registers the co-operative, which then operates on that basis. In a general sense, the registration process, the filing process, the annual filings, the changing of directors, etc., are somewhat similar to company law.