DRAFT LEGISLATION covering media mergers will be published early next year, Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte has said.

“Pressing issues” concerning ownership and control of media had led the Government to pursue the issue, he added. The heads of the Bill had already been brought to Government by Minister for Enterprise Richard Bruton and the two departments were working on drafting it.

The definition of “media” would explicitly include material published on the internet, he said.

“It is my intention that both the Oireachtas joint Committee on Communications, to which I answer, as well as the Committee on Enterprise and Innovation, which will deal with the Competition Bill as a whole, will have opportunities to consider and debate our proposals on media mergers,” Mr Rabbitte added.

Addressing the National Union of Journalists’ biennial delegate conference in Dublin on Saturday, Mr Rabbitte said the legislation owed its origins to the competition and mergers review group of 2000 and the report of the advisory group on media mergers presented to government in 2008.

At its most basic, he said, the criteria which made up conventional micro-economic competition analysis were inappropriate for media mergers because the proper functioning of the democratic system depended ultimately on liberty of expression and all it entailed.

“It is clearly the case that an excessive concentration of media ownership and control involves risks that go beyond those involved in the case of ordinary goods and services.”

Considerations when assessing any proposed merger would include the likely effect on plurality and the undesirability of allowing any one individual or undertaking to hold significant interests in a sector or in different sections of media businesses.

Consequences for the promotion of plurality in media businesses of intervening to prevent a media merger, or attaching conditions to the approval, would be considered.

Other considerations would be the adequacy of other mechanisms to protect public interest in plurality if the Minister decided not to intervene, as well as commitments and undertakings capable of being effectively incorporated in a ministerial decision.

The extent to which the public interest could be secured by imposition of any such conditions in approving a merger would be considered, said Mr Rabbitte.

The importance of the media and of mediating information between interested parties could not be underestimated. An active and diverse media sector, in terms of ownership and content, was a prerequisite in any modern democracy.

“Diversity of ownership is critical because it allows for the representation of dissimilar and often contradictory positions in the press,” he added, “and diversity of content is critical because it ensures that the full spectrum of views, interests and concerns prevalent in Irish society are represented fully in media.”