Irish Music Rights Organisation

Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) is the collecting society for songwriters, composers and music publishers of Ireland. Its role is to act as an agent for its members in order to collect license fees whenever their musical works are performed in public, broadcast or transmitted, and to pay out performing royalties.

IMRO has been immensely controversial since its foundation. Prospective members were asked to send in a copy of their birth certificate and bank account numbers. In return, when accepted, they were given an immensely complicated membership document which freed the organization from any obligation to account to the members beyond access to a global database.

Legal proceedings in Britain showed that the erstwhile chair of IMRO, Shay Hennessy, had been involved in theft of the copyright of his members before, while, and after being chair. The Irish bureau of Criminal investigations, in an investigation conducted between 2000 and 2003, formed the opinion that the song registrations in IMRO were being used as a cover for massive fraud. The investigation was aborted in 2003 with IMRO, in direct contact with the Director of public Prosecutions of Ireland, managing to get the police removed from the case. Bertie Ahern, the prime Minister, has a son-in-law who benefits enormously from IMRO sponsorship for his pop band, westlife.

In 1998, Hennessy signed a contract with Labras O Murchu of the Irish traditional music organization, comhaltas. Through this document IMRO, a privately owned body, claimed to own all Irish music and to have the right to issue licences for it. See beyondthecommons.org

As of 2007, IMRO had neither chair, vice-chair, nor CEO. The latter position had been held by Adrian Gaffney during Hennessy's reign, and indeed until 2006. Like Hennessy, Gaffney is connected with Ireland's Fianna Fail party. On being dismissed by the board in 2006, Gaffney, an accountant by trade, has made numerous fruitless attempts to get reinstated

It is not unfair to say that IMRO's acquisition of a monopoly in Ireland in 1996 has coincided with Ireland's demise as a world power in the quality end of popular music

From 2001 on, an exodus of leading Irish musicians from IMRO began, led by Donal Lunny, who also resigned from the board of IMRO. One consequence is that Lunny's 700+ works, along with the lyrics of the world's leading Gaelic poet are now registered with the American right agency Ascap.

External links

• IMRO
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