Legislation ensuring that major sporting events remain available to Irish television viewers is at an advanced stage, the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands told the Dail.

Ms de Valera also said she had been advised that a Labour proposal to amend the Competition Act, 1991, relating to media ownership, was unlikely to be fully effective. She said the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, had asked the Competition and Mergers Review Group to examine the issue, adding she supported the Tanaiste's view that the best advice should be available before the "complex issue" of cross-media ownership was addressed in legislation.

The Minister was responding to a Labour Private Member's Bill, moved by the party's spokesman on arts and culture, Mr Michael D. Higgins, limiting cross-ownership of the media to 25 per cent.

She said the measure, known as the Media (Public Right of Access and Diversity of Ownership) Bill, was not sufficiently thought through and clear criteria for the selection of events, access to which would be protected under the legislation, should be set out.

Ms de Valera believed the Bill's proposals to provide criminal sanctions might not be the best way of ensuring compliance with legislation; civil remedies might be more appropriate and effective.

She said that while the Commission on the Newspaper Industry had examined cross-media ownership in terms of newspaper, magazines, television and radio, it did not, because of its terms of reference, address other forms of media such as the Internet.

The traditional boundaries between broadcasting, information technology and telecommunications, and indeed between those sectors and newspapers and magazines, were being blurred in the information age. "Careful analysis is needed in developing definitions of relevant markets," said Ms de Valera.

Introducing the legislation on behalf of the Labour Party, Mr Higgins said the Bill held two fundamental principles. It established the entitlement of the citizen to view sport as a citizen's right rather than something which was a facility purchased on the market place.

The second principle related to diversity of ownership of the media. "Monopoly in ownership of forms of the media limits the diversity to which citizens enjoying a vibrant culture are entitled," he said.

It was in the public interest to have some limits on media ownership, he said. "My legislation is a moderate proposal. It simply stops a body or a corporate entity having more than 25 per cent of any two media."

This limit was because the Labour Party was "committed to the principle of diversity and diversity in forms of the media". Citizens were entitled to accept that when a person reached a ceiling of ownership, "passing that ceiling of itself is an abuse of a dominant position".

"We do not have the time to delay until the main broadcasting legislation is produced at the end of the year." He said if this legislation was rejected the State would have missed a whole period for the signing of contracts for digitalisation by corporations such as SKY television.

Mr Higgins said there should be a diversity of ownership and a plurality of editorial opinion in the Irish media and it was necessary to set this down clearly in a period of change before it was too late.

In a reference to Independent Newspapers, he said "one company has an ownership of about 90 per cent of Sunday newspapers, of 56 per cent in the dailies and somewhere between 15 and 18 per cent in regional newspaper".

Those voting against the legislation would be voting against principles of democratic universal access, he said. "I do not believe that there can be diversity, inclusion and a universal access that would come about accidentally from the marketplace."

He concluded that "the future in broadcasting cannot be left to economic competition".