Mr. Séamus Dooley:

I have over 30 years experience as a production journalist with the Irish Independent and before that I worked as editor of the Roscommon Championand was a reporter with The Tullamore Tribune. On my first day at the Roscommon Champion I covered a meeting of Roscommon County Council which Senator Leyden attended, though he may have been Deputy Leyden at the time. My hand was slapped by a reporter from the rival paper when a political opponent of Deputy Doherty spoke and she said "We don't take him". The Roscommon Herald had a policy of favouring one Deputy and it illustrated the importance, at an early stage for me, of diversity and plurality in the regional media sector.

We requested this hearing because it is the only opportunity for public scrutiny of this proposed acquisition. With me is Bernie Ní Fhlatharta, leas-chathaoirleach of the Irish executive council and a freelance reporter and broadcaster who has worked for The Connacht Tribune, and Ian McGuinness, Irish organiser of the NUJ. Both of them will be free to take questions.

The guidelines on media mergers provide the framework for the deliberations of this committee. The work of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission has been done and the function of this committee is to examine the issue of media plurality. The guidelines are a useful starting point for this. I share the views of Tadhg Carey, a member of the NUJ and a shareholder of Celtic Media, and many of my former colleagues have also been made redundant by Independent News and Media, when it decided to outsource editorial production to Yorkshire.

The NUJ has a long history of opposing media concentration of ownership. Our first intervention was in 1973 when Tony O'Reilly acquired Independent Newspapers and when the late Justin Keating advised our future president of the union, John Devine, that no politician would have the courage to take on someone who bought ink by the barrel. Our opposition then, as it is now, was based on a belief in the importance of media diversity and not on personalities. If the focus of the debate on media ownership has appeared to concentrate on Independent News and Media, on Communicorp or on Denis O'Brien, it is because successive Governments have allowed a concentration of ownership to develop, directly and indirectly. The committee is obliged, under the media mergers guidelines, to look not just at the reach of Independent Newspapers but also at Communicorp. None of the previous speakers from Independent News and Media or Celtic Media mentioned the significant interest held by Communicorp within Independent News and Media but that cross-ownership distinguishes this from other acquisitions.

The issue of ownership is all too frequently assumed to be about direct editorial interference by owners and shareholders on editorial content. In many ways this is simplistic, as ownership is linked to financial control and determines the priority given to editorial budgets. It determines business models, wages and payments and conditions. It determines one's pension, or absence thereof, and the corporate approach to pensions, which was illustrated in the recent developments in Independent News and Media, an issue with which we deal in our submission.

I point out to the committee that it is entitled to ask Independent News & Media about its failure to honour commitments given to the Pensions Authority of Ireland. Under the guidelines, the committee has a clear responsibility to ask questions relating to corporate governance. The committee is entitled to question Independent News & Media on developments involving the proposed sale of Newstalk to it and the circumstances which led to public statements involving the chair and chief executive of the company.

The creation of the post of editor-in-chief at Independent Newspapers in June 2013 marked a new departure. It is worth noting that the editor-in-chief reports directly to the group chief executive. Under the merger guidelines, the committee is also entitled to question editorial structures. The committee and the BAI are entitled to examine the potential of centralised editorial structures and we encourage such deliberations. They are also entitled to examine not just the current situation, but the implications for the future too.

Our BAI submission outlines concerns relating to the business and editorial model adopted by Independent News & Media and the potential implications for media plurality if Celtic Media is incorporated under the INM regional banner. I welcome the comments of Mr. Lennon but I regret, however, that he was not in place when Independent News & Media ignored that same logic about local involvement when it closed the titles in north County Dublin and centralised them in Drogheda. It may seem inconceivable that the editing and production of the titles involved would be centralised but there was a time when it was inconceivable that editorial production of the Sunday Independent, Irish Independent, Sunday Worldand Evening Herald would be outsourced to Yorkshire, but that is what happened last year. When the Belfast Telegraph was acquired by Independent Newspapers, commitments were given about the maintenance of editorial diversity. However, the sharing of copy between the Belfast Telegraph and INM titles is not uncommon. I draw the committee's attention to the impact on freelance journalists and media plurality by the corporate approach to freelance copyright and we have included a copy of the document which freelance journalists are required to sign in order to secure work.

Obviously, I am answering 20 minutes on the two companies in five. For illustrative purposes, we have produced a set of maps which illustrate the respective ownership of Independent News & Media and Celtic Media Group.

I believe the role of the regional paper and the role of the national newspapers are important. We welcomed the acquisition of Celtic Media Group by Mr. Mulrennan and have worked closely with him. NUJ members have made sacrifices to ensure its viability but those sacrifices were not made so that a larger group could acquire a leaner and cheaper machine.