Ms Orla Twomey:

No, it is not a statutory body. It is a self-regulatory body set up by the advertising industry 37 years ago. I do not believe there is a conflict because ultimately we have a complaints committee with an independent chairperson and a majority of members not associated with the industry. The complaints committee sees the formal decisions we bring to it. We also bring a sample of cases to it on a regular basis in order that it can be happy that when we are deciding to deal with something informally, we are doing so in line with the expected standards. The adjudications we have published on our website show that we act in a manner that is consistent across all advertisers. It is a matter of whether the content of the ad breaches the code. Actually who the advertiser is is not particularly relevant to us. What is relevant is the content and what the code states.