Dr. Olive McCarthy:

I am happy to take this. The CDU we had in Ireland was founded in the 1990s or thereabouts, at a time of very high unemployment. It was designed to support, in particular, family businesses in transition. I am no expert on family business but we know we have many family businesses in Ireland. Approximately 64% of all of the businesses we have here are family businesses. One of the biggest issues that family businesses have is succession. In the 1990s the co-operative development unit was very much involved in trying to support family businesses that had issues with succession to convert to worker co-operatives. It was quite successful in this. Quite a large number of co-operatives were formed at the time. This was with the support and help of the co-operative development unit.

Our view is that legislation is critical to the development of the co-operative movement but it is only one part of the picture. Of course there will need to be other supports, including policy, for co-operatives to develop. With regard to what this should look like, there are different approaches in different countries. We have seen Glasgow City Council very much driving the co-operative development unit there. In other countries we have more co-operative-led approaches. For example in the UK there is a wide range of organisations but Co-operatives UK is driven by the co-operatives themselves. In the US the National Cooperative Business Association is driven by the co-operatives. In Canada there is almost a two-tier approach in terms of the co-operatives themselves and the State.

Over time there will be a need for more support. What we have seen over the years is that often when an organisation goes to a solicitor or an accountant the co-operative model is not seen as the first obvious choice. There will definitely be a need for much more education and training more generally on the co-operative approach. Perhaps there could be something like a co-operative development unit but there would need to be some consideration as to whether it should come from the sector itself or whether it should be a more State-driven initiative. We have representative bodies for co-operatives such as ICOS which are very strong this area. Perhaps it could be almost an expansion of the role of the representative bodies.