Scottish Radio Holdings (SRH) wants to buy more Irish radio stations and local papers, and will pay "good prices" when the right ones come along, its chief executive has said, writes Emmet Oliver

Mr Richard Findlay said several provincial paper owners had approached the firm with proposals to sell and several possibilities were being examined. "We have the fire power to buy further assets in Ireland, but it depends on the right ones coming along," he said.

On recent deals, he said SRH generally did not do the approaching. "They know where we are."

He said the firm's spending spree (at least by Irish standards) had "woken up the Irish market" and other Scottish and English groups were now interested in Irish media assets.

Mr Findlay was in Ireland this week holding a board meeting and talking with staff at Today FM, its only radio interest in the Republic. He delivered an upbeat assessment of the Irish media market and said most local papers were well run with strong links with advertisers.

Asked how many media assets the group was hoping to buy this year, he said: "It is hard to say at present but we have a strong balance sheet and we will pay a good price for well-run, established businesses.

"You just don't know when the right opportunity will come along. It is impossible to say how many acquisitions there will be at this stage."

Mr Findlay, a former journalist and civil servant, said the firm had an equal appetite for local papers and radio stations, and its purchases would not be confined by region. He said SRH was the third-largest player in regional Irish media, behind Independent News & Media and Examiner Publications.

Under his management, the firm has regularly out-bid Irish newspaper groups for local papers, particularly the Examiner. This has led some newspaper figures to deride the prices SRH pays but Mr Findlay defended its strategy.

"Those kind of comments tend to come from the people who threw their hat in the ring and lost. It depends what you think you can get out of them. We look at things like return on capital and make our decision."

He believes moving into Ireland is not a gamble, but sound business sense. Almost 20 per cent of SRH turnover comes from its Irish assets, said Mr Findlay. The assets stack up as follows: Kilkenny People; the Tipperary Star; the Leitrim Observer; the Longford Leader; National and Munster Advertiser and Today FM.

There are plenty of others out there, he says, although getting the right fit is not always easy. "The price can be too high, there may be something funny about the accounts we can't quite put our finger on or there may be some problem with the properties - these are the kind of things that can prevent a sale."

Mr Findlay said the firm was particularly interested in finding suitable radio businesses and a previous approach was made to Country 106FM, but it fell through. He said another station, FM104 (owned by Capital Radio Productions), had been talked of as a potential buy by some people in the radio industry, but under Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) rules it could not be sold for another year.

The Irish Times understands that FM 104, with a slump in advertising and a dispute with the JNLR over its listenership figures, is unlikely to come to market for some time. Several stations controlled by Denis O'Brien are also unlikely to be sold, so options are limited, Mr Findlay conceded.

The BCI looks "unfavourably" on stations seeking to change ownership two years or less after their licence has been awarded or renewed.

Some in the radio business are not enamoured of this position, but Mr Findlay has sympathy with what the BCI was trying to do. "They do not want people off-loading stations 24 hours after they have been given a licence and I can understand that."

While a grab for radio assets, at least in Dublin, may have to wait, Mr Findlay is happy with the performance of Today FM.

The local papers that SRH have bought are performing strongly, he said, with local management remaining in place in virtually all of them.

"That is a big part of our strategy. We let the managers who know the market well continue to run the businesses."

He said the slump in advertising was not really a factor for local titles.