An Irish newspaper company with a history of supporting Sinn Fein is reported to be on the verge of purchasing the New York-based Irish Echo, according to a newspaper report in Ireland.

If true, the move could put the weekly Irish Echo more directly in competition with its main rival, the Irish Voice, which is also pro-Sinn Fein.

The Sunday Independent in Dublin reported that the Belfast-based Andersonstown News Group “is understood to be about to buy” the Irish Echo for a sum “believed to be around $5 million.” The article said the Echo’s present owner, Sean Finlay, bought the weekly for $2.2 million in 2001.

The managing editor of the Irish Echo, Séan MacCárthaigh, told The New York Sun that he had no comment. Mr. Finlay could not be reached by press time. The publisher of the Irish Voice, Niall O’Dowd, did not return calls by press time.

One industry source, who declined to be named, told the Sun that other publishing companies have expressed interest in the Irish Echo.

A principal at the law firm O’Dwyer & Bernstein, Brian O’Dwyer, said that if the Andersonstown News Group were to buy the Irish Echo, it would not be such a major shift of the emphasis of either paper, as both the Echo and the Irish Voice have been rather “nationalist” in recent years.

Mr. O’Dwyer, who is chairman of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, said the main difference between the papers is that the Irish Voice has tended to focus more on immigration issues while the Irish Echo emphasized issues in Ireland.

The executive director of the Pace American Irish Institute, Christopher Cahill, said it is beneficial for a wide range of views to be represented in the Irish-American press in North America.

The Irish Echo, founded in 1928, has been a long been a mainstay in the Irish-American community. According its 2006 press kit, it has a readership of 100,000 and is the only Irish-American newspaper printed simultaneously both in Ireland and America.