Ireland has slipped from fourth to tenth place in the table which measures the compliance of EU states in implementing EU directives within the specified time.
Last year, this State had implemented 98.55 per cent of EU directives on time and its record was only bettered by Denmark, Spain and Finland.
By November of this year, the compliance rate had slipped to 97.77 per cent. Newer EU states such as Lithuania, Poland and Hungary all had better compliance rates.
Nevertheless, Ireland's compliance rate was still higher than the EU average of 96.2 per cent.
In 2002, Ireland was in tenth place out of 15 countries while it was seventh in 2001. Its implementation of EU directives was poorest in 2000 when it was ranked 11th out of 15 states.
Just before Christmas, the European Commission said it was referring Ireland to the European Court of Justice for failing to properly implement a directive protecting the rights of authors whose books are lent by libraries. It also affects the work of film-makers and performance artists.
The EU directive (92/100/EEC) was introduced to harmonise the lending of works by public institutions such as libraries and universities. Because book borrowing may lessen the demand for buying certain works, the directive gave authors the right to forbid the public lending of their work.
Member-states had the option of establishing a right for authors to be paid when their works were lent by public libraries. They also had the right to exempt certain categories of libraries from making this payment.
However, the EU Commission found that Ireland had exempted all public lending institutions from the charge. Spain and Portugal did the same and have also been referred to the European Court of Justice.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment said that the official communication from the EU Commission was being studied and legal advice would be sought.
The Department pointed out that the decision to exempt all Irish libraries was a deliberate one, on the basis that the Irish lending pool was very small and the State had a policy of making cultural information available to the public.
