Informal Relationships and De Facto Independence of the Regulator in the Irish Telecommunications Regulatory Arrangement

Abstract

As with the other jurisdictions considered in this book, the Irish state’s administrative apparatus has performed a variety of social and economic regulatory functions for many years.¹ A rapid and comparatively recent increase in the use of independent national regulatory agencies (IRAs) between 1990 and 2010, however, increased the complexity of the Irish regulatory environment and presented new governance and coordination challenges. The work and organization of these new IRAs have been strongly influenced not only by the EU and domestic actors such as the courts but also by the Irish politico-administrative regime and culture. Drawing on an analysis of the Irish regulatory arrangement for telecommunications, the focus of this chapter is on the primary Irish telecoms regulator — ComReg — and in particular how the use of informal powers and influence has been deployed to meet the challenges of regulating a rapidly changing policy sector.