SATELLITE BROADCASTER BSkyB published its first-quarter results yesterday but, for the first time since 2001, there was no break-out of Irish subscriber numbers.

A spokesman for the British pay TV group said the move was taken for "commercial reasons". That's corporate speak for "we don't have to tell you, so we won't".

Up to the end of March, Sky dishes were hanging from 548,500 Irish homes. It was adding more than 1,000 a week and was on the cusp of overtaking UPC, parent group of the NTL and Chorus cable TV operators, as Ireland's biggest TV platform.

Its decision recently to knock down the price of its Sky+ set-top boxes to just €49 is said to have kept the level of new subscriptions ticking over nicely.

So what's to hide? The "commercial" imperative isn't obvious. UPC, Sky's biggest rival here, publishes data quarterly for its Irish cable TV operations, including revenue figures.

Sky has long been accused of milking the Irish market and giving little back. Its daily Irish news bulletin proved short-lived. It's a charge that Sky consistently rejects, arguing that it employs 100 staff at a call centre in Cork and 50 people in Dublin. It also operates 40 retail outlets here.

Its detractors, notably Channel 6 founder Pat Donnelly, argue that Sky is outside the reach of Irish regulators - it falls under the umbrella of Ofcom in Britain - and doesn't produce any financial accounts for the Irish operation.

Given that it takes an estimated €300 million in subscriber and advertising revenue from this market, the least Sky can do is tell us how many subscribers it has here.