The Government's guidelines on media mergers are set to be finalised and then published in the next few weeks, says Minister for Communications Alex White, who told the Local Newspaper Symposium last week that the submissions he had received from media organisations had been "very mixed in their perspectives".

Some 10 interested parties gave the Department of Communications feedback on the draft guidelines published late last year ahead of the January 22nd deadline. A small number of respondents then received a short extension to the consultation period after indicating that they couldn’t quite meet the deadline – a rather un-media-like failure.

Meanwhile, two broadcasting sector reports commissioned by the department in the second half of 2013 are still to be published. An economic analysis by consultants Indecon of the Irish advertising market, likely to be published only in redacted form, may eventually form the basis of revised regulations on the permitted levels of advertising minutage.

Secondly, a study of RTÉ's operating costs by semi-State consultants NewERA completed more than a year ago has also not been released, but is said to have concluded that scope for further cost efficiencies at RTÉ were limited.