Professor Colum Kenny:

I am conscious of the economic and business implications of this kind of conglomeration of media titles. It can be in the public interest to have mergers. I am personally steeped in a family background of advertising. My grandfather started the first full-service advertising agency in Dublin. His clients included Arthur Griffith and Pádraig Pearse. My first job was in advertising and I have invested in media and been a director of media, so apropos of something said by another witness, I am fully conscious that the business of media is crucial. Ireland may well need bigger media organisations and that can be in the public interest. The difficulty is that the devil is in the detail. We do not have enough information to assess the detail in a way that can answer the concerns expressed by the NUJ. My sense, and one of the reasons I ceased writing for the Sunday Independent, was that the internal organisation of Independent Newspapers was becoming less diverse. I would have concerns but I cannot make the assessment that the committee will have to make based on what I hope will be a full range of information. It can be in the public interest, but it may not be.