There are days when I feel as old as Father Time, wearily ushering in yet another new year. It certainly feels like déjà vu to be writing about the situation within Kerry Co-op.

Why should anyone care about Kerry? Well, there’s €2.2bn at stake, most of it owned by farm families. That’s enough to pay €10 on every beef animal slaughtered in Ireland for the next 100 years.

At its final meeting of 2018, the board rejected a proposal for a partial but significant spin-out of shares.

The proposal was structured in a way that would have seen the shares classified by Revenue as income rather than as a capital gain, costing shareholders dearly.

The proposal was in part designed to head off any momentum being gained by the Concerned Shareholder Alliance for its preferred option of a total spin-out in a liquidation of the co-op.

A new co-op would be set up, with a “startup fund” donated from the old shareholding.

The co-op board, in contrast, want to invest in other agi-food projects, and to consider acquiring dairy processing assets. The rationale for this is that someday Kerry plc may decide to stop processing milk in Ireland.

It is prudent for the co-op to have some contingency plan for such a doomsday scenario. However, if there were a modicum of trust between the co-op and the plc, a simple clause entitling the co-op to first option to buy the Irish business might suffice.

Glanbia is the only valid comparison to Kerry, a co-op with a €1bn-plus shareholding in the global plc they established as a regional dairy processor.

When Glanbia was making crucial decisions on its future, clear proposals were drawn up and exhaustively presented to shareholders at dozens of meetings. They were not always accepted, but had a clear mandate when they were.

Kerry Co-op, to its credit, did hold the consultation process. However, the co-op is continuing to examine the purchase of the Kerry agribusiness, which the membership in the consultation process overwhelmingly rejected.

Mo money, mo problems, as the man said.