The Football Association of Ireland will submit a paper to the Government later this week outlining its concerns over plans to prevent television rights to key sporting events from being sold to satellite broadcasters.
FAI lawyers and officials are putting the finishing touches to the document, which will constitute their response to a request last month from the Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern, for submissions on the subject.
The GAA, the IRFU and other sporting organisations will also be making submissions to the Minister.
Mr Ahern is expected to produce a list of sports events that must be shown free on terrestrial television by mid-September, after last month's controversy over the FAI deal with Sky television giving the British subscription broadcaster exclusive rights to show Ireland's home games in the World Cup qualifying campaign.
With just a month to go before the start of that campaign, an FAI spokesman said yesterday that the association's position remains that any change to the deal was now in the hands of Sky television.
However, the Taoiseach told the FAI last month that he believed it had the primary responsibility to resolve the situation. In addition, the European Commission has said the Government can force Sky to sell the rights to the games to RTÉ or TV3 at a market price.
There was no Government spokesman available yesterday to say whether any discussions have taken place with Sky on the issue, and whether there has been any change in the situation in the wake of the public outcry over the deal.
The FAI spokesman said yesterday that the FAI paper would cover not just the narrow issue of the Sky deal, but the broader issue of whether to exclude key sporting events from sale to the highest bidder.
The other sporting organisations are also expected to raise objections to this, on the basis that it could deny them valuable revenue for TV rights in the future.