Section 19(11) of the Broadcasting Act 2001, provides that the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, which is a statutorily independent body, shall draw up new codes and rules relating to advertising likely to be of direct or indirect interest to children. In November 2002, I formally directed the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland to draw up new codes and rules relating to advertising and in accordance with section 19(2) of the 2001 Act I specified that priority be given to codes relating to advertising directed at children. The commission subsequently embarked on a public consultation process seeking the views of interested parties. With this phase of the process completed in July last year the commission moved to the next phase. It engaged in a process to raise public awareness of the development of the codes, gathered views on the content of the code using a second public consultation document. The commission consulted widely including consultation with children themselves. I understand that the commission intends to finalise and publish new codes by the middle of this year.
As I have no statutory function in relation to the content of the codes I do not intend to comment on individual submissions. It is open to any broadcaster or to the industry at large, to introduce additional voluntary measures over and above those that might be included in codes to be drawn up by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland.
