Minister for Enterprise Micheál Martin has asked the Competition Authority chairman Dr Bill Prasifka to explain an internal error which led to inadvertent clearance for the sale of Statoil's Irish unit to Topaz. The authority missed the legal deadline to put restrictions on the multimillion-euro deal.
Business leaders and Opposition politicians poured scorn on the anti-trust body after it admitted to miscalculating the statutory deadline for its official scrutiny of the deal by one day.
As a result, the deal received automatic clearance on Monday before the authority could impose the conditions it wanted on a transaction which will create the largest fuel distribution business in the State.
Mr Martin is understood to have instructed a senior official to ask the authority whether it has put measures in place to avoid a repeat of its mistake.
Topaz came forward last month with proposals to address the authority's concerns about aspects of the Statoil deal. While the unwitting clearance for the transaction means that Topaz is free to withdraw its proposals, the group has indicated that it does not intend to do that.
Conceding that the mistake was embarrassing, the authority's spokesman said it planned further discussions with Topaz because the consortium had not exercised its right to cancel its proposals. "If those discussions are successful, the competition issues will be resolved," he said.
Business lobby Ibec said the affair called into question the effectiveness and credibility of the authority in merger control.
"Errors such as this could have serious consequences for Irish merger activity and significantly impact on our credibility in merger control," said Marie Daly, the lobby's head of legal and regulatory affairs.
Labour TD Tommy Broughan said the public would never know whether the authority had concerns about a deal that was taking place at a time of rising fuel prices. "Unfortunately, there seems to be a culture of ineptitude seeping into many regulatory bodies," he said. Senator Paul Coghlan of Fine Gael said the authority should be held accountable for its failure to protect the public interest.
There was no response to such remarks from the authority, which said that the number of days remaining for scrutiny of the deal were miscounted after Topaz came forward with its proposals on September 22nd. Controlled by Ion Equity, Topaz entered the fuel business last year when it bought Shell's Irish unit.
"There's been a lot of talk about companies disposing of service stations, but with the exception of some inevitable rejigging of our current network, we expect to be acquirers and investors in sites in the months and years ahead," said chief executive Danny Murray.
Separately, sources close to the Musgrave wholesale and retail group denied suggestions from senior industry sources that it was in talks to buy 60 service stations owned by Texaco, the oil multinational. Musgrave and Texaco each said they do not comment on market speculation.
