Greens take RTE to court over convention coverage

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday February 17, 2003 16:23 by Graham Caswell - Green Party

(Press Release)

The Green Party has been granted an application in the High Court today to challenge RTE's decision to exclude the Party from live political party conference coverage.

Green Party General Secretary, Stiofán Nutty, said today, "Regretfully we were left with no alternative but to go down this route. We are extremely disappointed that RTE senior management were not prepared to meet us half way on this most important issue. Our annual conference takes place in a couple of weeks' time on the 1st March so we were anxious to resolve the problem. However, RTE senior management made it quite clear that they were not prepared to negotiate."

Mr. Nutty said that RTE guidelines stipulate that a political party must have received 5% of the vote and/or have had 7 TDs elected to the Dáil. "RTE are now adhering to these strict guidelines despite the fact that the Green Party have six TDs and two MEPs and despite the fact that RTE changed their own guidelines after the 1997 General Election to accommodate the Progressive Democrats. As it stands, according to RTE's guidelines, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour, the Progressive Democrats and Sinn Féin will all receive live coverage of their annual party conferences. The Green Party is the only main national political party that is being excluded from live coverage. We were extremely reluctant to take this route but the Party felt that it could not allow RTE's decision to go unchallenged."