However, his department has confirmed that Burke\u2019s order lapsed on September 30th, when it emerged that the Oireachtas had not approved it on time, exposing deals agreed or completed since that date to possible investigation by the commission. <\/p>\n
The ministerial order increased the financial threshold at which mergers must be notified to the commission to a combined turnover of \u20ac100 million or more, from \u20ac60 million.<\/p>\n
Competition law obliges the CCPC to investigate deals meeting the threshold to ensure they do not damage competition in their relevant markets, before approving them, often with conditions meant to protect competition.<\/p>\n
As the order lapsed on September 30th, the old rules have applied since then.<\/p>\n
So mergers or takeovers agreed or completed since then, where the parties\u2019 combined turnover is \u20ac60 million or more, and two of those involved have sales of at least \u20ac10 million each, may face investigation by the commission.<\/p>\n
The CCPC is advising businesses involved in transactions either agreed or completed since September 30th to consider if they meet the old threshold and whether they should notify it of the deal.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792252335_88_1784803479672-9ae96ac7-c636-4bcb-998c-c0aedcc60931.jpeg\"\/)
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The commission pledged not to investigate any parties to deals done in those circumstances for \u201cgun jumping\u201d, that is completing the transactions before getting its approval.<\/p>\n
Any mergers completed between July 1st and September 30th were subject to the increased threshold, that is a combined turnover of \u20ac100 million or more, and at least \u20ac15 million for two of the parties involved.<\/p>\n
According to the department, Burke\u2019s order increasing the threshold was laid before the Oireachtas, but did not get the approval of both the D\u00e1il and Seanad within the time set out by the Competition Act, 2002. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, the order ceased to have effect,\u201d said a spokeswoman, who confirmed that the error emerged following a department review.<\/p>\n
The Act requires the CCPC to investigate mergers for their likely impact on competition, but gives the Minster the power to raise the thresholds for such inquiries to keep them in line with inflation and economic circumstances.<\/p>\n
Ministerial orders, also dubbed statutory instruments, generally need Oireachtas approval before taking effect.<\/p>\n
Burke signed the order on June 10th, branding the move part of his efforts to cut red tape for business.<\/p>\n
The Minister said at the time that he increased the financial notification threshold in response to a public consultation that he held earlier this year.<\/p>\n
The CCPC favoured an increase as it allowed the regulator to focus resources on deals more likely to have a meaningful impact on competition and consumers.<\/p>\n
The last increase was in 2019, before the significant inflation that followed Covid and the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The commission has the power to \u201ccall in\u201d transactions below the \u20ac100 million value where it believes they could affect competition.<\/p>\n
The department will work with the CCPC to \u201cprogress revised merger notification thresholds at the earliest opportunity in 2027,\u2033 according to its spokeswoman. The law allows only one change each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Businesses that agreed mergers or takeovers in recent weeks may face investigation by competition regulators as a result…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,11756,38262,61,60,12361],"class_list":["post-657660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-competition-and-consumer-protection-commission-ccpc","tag-department-of-enterprise-trade-and-employment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-peter-burke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}