Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber and wish him the best of luck in a very important portfolio, in particular given the trying times in which we are living. I will speak to Part 3 of the Bill, which the Minister of State covered very well. Many co-operative societies have contacted me in the last few weeks with concerns about how they are going to manage their day-to-day affairs and their AGMs. The clarification on such matters in Part 3 is very important because many agricultural societies, specifically co-operatives, have hundreds if not thousands of members. This Bill brings clarity on how they can formulate an AGM. That is a very important point in my part of the world, as Carbery, Dairygold and Kerry are all part of this co-operative society in many ways. We now have clarity on how they can do their business from now until the end of the year. There was some worry in the agricultural sphere about how we could have checks and balances in our co-operative societies if we did not have AGMs, which are so important for the day-to-day running of the societies. Part 3 of the Bill, which the Minister of State explained in detail, is very important and it is what we need in order to go forward in these unfortunate times. This is probably going to be a template for the future, not only for the end of this year but for a considerable period of time. It is welcome that this Bill can be amended by ministerial order, because if we need to push this into next year or the year after, we must have that kind of legislation in place. We are living in new and unusual times, to say the least.

The real challenges going forward will be how people can interact with these new forums. Broadband is going to be a massive issue. The communication network in some parts of rural Ireland is not currently capable of hosting all these Zoom meetings, so that will be another challenge. It is very good to have the legislation but we need the technology to tie in to it as well. Those are the challenges we need to work on in the next few months. The clarification offered by the Minister of State in Part 3 of this Bill has in many ways sorted out many of the fears the agricultural co-operative societies had about how they could run their businesses for the next six or eight months.