Dr. Roderick Flynn:

In some respects we are in a healthier situation at the moment in that, ironically, there is less concentration in 2022 than there was in 2015. However, the issue has not gone away. The relevant Act at the moment is the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014, which in section 4 governs media concentration. This deploys responsibility for assessing media mergers across the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, BAI. All three of these may be brought to bear, or maybe just the Minister and the CCPC. The BAI only comes in if requested by the Minister. At present, the only quantitative limit, even in a regulatory code, is in a BAI code that relates to sound broadcasting service, specifically radio broadcasting services. This states no single company should be allowed to own more than 25% of the total number of radio stations in the country, so no more than a quarter of the total. That number takes no account of the nature of those individual stations.. It does not matter what your market is or what your audience share is. This is why we had a situation where a single company, a single individual, simultaneously owned both national private broadcasters for a long time. They owned Today FM and Radio Ireland while also owning a number of regional stations. They had not breached the limits because the number of stations they owned was well below whatever the figure would have been. In other countries there are limits. For example, in Germany there are specified market share limits. I think it is something like no more than 20% of the print market can be controlled by an individual or by a newspaper group, although Mr. Dooley might know more about this.

The short answer to the question is "Yes". There is nothing to prohibit us in European law from writing this into legislation, and while acknowledging the BAI's points about seeking flexibility, the idea is that we should at least have some number in there to prevent a situation. At the moment in theory there is no legal prohibition on one company owning everything and having 100% market dominance. Even if the number is 50% or 30%, and we can debate what that might be, there should be some number in law.