THE Audit Bureau of Circulation has initiated an inquiry into claims by British news papers of colossal gains in the Republic's market.
The move follows formal complaints by the National Newspapers of Ireland and other media interests, who have asked advertisers to disregard the latest figures until the matter is cleared up.
Some industry observers suggested last night that the bureau may have inadvertently recorded the gross supplies of British newspapers as net sales. Such an error would result in every copy shipped to distributors being counted as a copy bought, even if newsagents were left with piles of unsold papers at the end of each day.
The influential ABC survey records, for example, that the Sun's average circulation rose from 59,410 a day from July to December 1995 to 89,942 a day in the last six months of 1996.
This claim exceeds even the figure the tabloid claimed in its own pages, on December 18th, of 66,481 a day for the month of November.
On December 19th the Irish edition of the Daily Mirror responded to the Sun, saying that its sales had reached 40,026 a day in the Republic.
The ABC figures recorded sales of the Mirror's Irish edition at 66,218 a day.
Industry analysts have also cast doubtful eyes on the ABC figures for the London broadsheets. They pointed to how the Guardian had apparently more than doubled its sales in the Republic in the space of six months from an average of 2,352 a day in the first half of 1996 to 4,974 a day in the latter half.
According to the survey, sales of the London Times soared from 5,265 a day for January June to 16,970 per day from July to December.