Ireland is one of the few countries in the world showing an overall increase in newspaper sales, the chairman of the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) said at the NNI Advertising Awards ceremony last night.
Mr Louis O'Neill, chief executive and group managing director of The Irish Times, said this was a "remarkable achievement given the unique pressures facing our indigenous press".
He said a record £160 million was spent by advertisers on NNI newspapers last year. "That represents an extraordinary growth of some 45 per cent in the past two years - even in the context of our boom economy, those are exceptional figures."
"We are fortunate here in Ireland to have a very literate population, who are avid readers. This dedicated audience, thankfully, is buying more newspapers than ever before. It is that loyal and captive audience which reads and absorbs advertisers' messages every day. Perhaps they are amused by them, enthralled by them, informed by them, or maybe in some cases incensed by them. Whatever the reaction, Irish people not only notice newspaper advertising, but are also influenced by newspaper advertising," he added.
The "sheer volume" and the "extraordinarily high standard" of entries to this year's NNI Advertising Awards were "living proof that, at its best, newspaper advertising offers a range of benefits and advantages that cannot be matched by any other medium," Mr O'Neill said.
He praised the Government's role in the management of the economy, but pointed out that there were still a number of critical issues which needed to be addressed if the current health of the newspaper advertising industry was to be maintained - specifically: VAT, defamation and copyright.
Echoing Mr O'Neill's comments, the NNI's co-ordinating director, Mr Frank Cullen, said in a statement to coincide with the awards that these issues required "positive Government action and updated legislation" as a matter of the utmost urgency.
Irish newspapers were doing well at the moment, Mr Cullen said, but they could be doing a lot better. "Newspapers in this country are currently being squeezed and stifled by legislative factors which are not only inhibiting the industry's progress on the domestic front, but are also seriously out of step with the Government's projected image of Ireland as a player in the worldwide information superhighway."
Urging reform of the copyright laws, he commented: "Under present legislation, Irish newspapers are in an extremely vulnerable position in relation to copyright. They urgently need to be protected by law against infringement of copyright - at home and abroad; otherwise the so-called superhighway will, for all practical intents and purposes, pass us by."
On VAT, he said that successive governments had burdened Irish newspapers with the highest rate of VAT (12.5 per cent) on cover prices in Europe. "In a country which also suffers from the highest level of transfrontier competition in Europe, from a neighbour whose own newspapers enjoy a zero rate of VAT in their domestic market, it is absolutely devastating."
Calling for libel law reform, he said that defamation actions "are costing national newspapers millions of pounds per annum - an ever-present economic threat that is curtailing newspapers' ability to do their job, and holding up our progress as a liberal, forward-thinking nation".