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In 2008, a government-appointed advisory group published its 126-page report on media mergers, recommending a number of amendments to the law on media mergers contained in the Competition Act 2002 (see IRIS 2009-3/13). The Irish parliament enacted on the 28 July 2014 the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014, which entered into force on the 31 October 2014, amending the Competition Act 2002 and incorporating many of the media merger law reforms proposed by the advisory group. The 2014 Act repeals the old section 23 of the 2002 Act, which regulated media mergers and replaces it with a more...

Following its 12-month passage through parliament, the new Freedom of Information Act 2014 came into force in Ireland on 14 October 2014. The 91-page law repeals both the original Freedom of Information Act 1997 (see IRIS 1997-10/13) and the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Act 2003 (see IRIS 2003-9/28). Moreover, the Irish public expenditure minister has made a ministerial order under the 2014 Act, setting out the new fees that will be charged for freedom of information requests from October 2014 onwards. The most significant reform brought about by the 2014 Act is that, instead of listing specific...

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s compliance committee has held that the Newstalk 106-108 radio station breached the Authority’s broadcasting code, when one of its presenters stated he would vote in favour of same-sex-marriage in any future referendum in Ireland. The decision arose when a complaint was made to the Authority over a 10-minute item on the Newstalk Breakfast Show programme concerning a forthcoming gay-pride parade in Dublin (for a similar complaint against the Irish public broadcaster recently upheld by the Authority, see IRIS 2014-8/27). The programme item included a presenter...

At its meeting of July 2014, the Compliance Committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) upheld, in part, a complaint made against the broadcast of a dance routine, which included clear sexual overtones. The complaint concerned the broadcast of the dance routine at 6:30pm on a Sunday evening on RTÉ television’s The Voice of Ireland, without any prior audience warnings or notifications as to the nature of the content. Under section 48 of the Broadcasting Act 2009, viewers can complain about broadcasting content, which they believe is not in keeping with broadcasting codes and rules....

On 28 May 2014, the European Commission approved the EUR 780 million takeover of O2 Ireland, the second largest mobile operator in the country, by Three Ireland, the smallest and most recent operator. The deal brings Three Ireland’s share of the market to 37%. When the proposed acquisition was notified to the Commission in October 2013, the Commission considered that, without remedies, it would lead to higher prices and less competition. Hutchison (trading as Three Ireland) proposed a number of commitments to resolve the EC’s competition concerns. The takeover, therefore, was made conditional on...