Eoin Ryan
Question:226 Mr. E. Ryan asked the Minister for Enterprise and Employment his views on the effect of the net book agreement on Irish publishers and writers. [2306/96]
Written Answers - NET Book Agreement.
In June 1994 the Competition Authority refused to issue a licence or a certificate under the Competition Act, 1991 to the net book agreement — NBA — a voluntary agreement administerd by the UK Publishing Association whereby book publishers impose a minimum net price on the sale of most of their publications in the UK and in this State. In its detailed and comprehensive decision, the authority noted that the NBA involved a degree of resale price maintenance and concluded that the weight of evidence indicated that resale price maintenance and restrictive of competition. The authority concluded further that NBA did not contribute to improving the production of goods or the provision of services or to promoting technical or economic progress. Consumers could not therefore share in such benefits and the restrictions could not be regarded as indispensable to the achievement of such objectives. As UK published books accounted for a substantial proportion of books sold in Ireland and as most UK published books were net books, the Competition Authority found that the restrictions contained in the NBA eliminated competition in a substantial part of the market for books within the State.
Under the Competition Act, 1991, an appeal against a negative decision by the authority is open to those aggrieved by way of judicial review.
Those who favoured the retention of the NBA claimed that small or specialist book shops or publishers might be put at a disadvantage and that special interest titles might not get published if the resale price maintenance in the NBA were abolished. These points were taken into account by the authority in reaching its decision.
It should be noted that the net book agreement has not, effectively, been in operation in Ireland since 1992. I have no evidence to suggest that there have been untoward consequences as a result of the non-operation of the NBA since then. On the contrary, the consumer is now benefiting from lower prices on an increasing scale.