As many as one million votes are expected to be cast in the final of RTÉ's You're a Star talent contest this weekend.
The competition to find Ireland's Eurovision entry has been shown weekly on RTÉ 1 for the last 20 weeks. The final will take place tonight at 8 p.m., with the live results broadcast tomorrow evening at 8 p.m.
About 650,000 votes were registered within an hour last Sunday night, and contest producers, ShinAwil, expect this figure to increase after the final show.
Mickey Joe Harte will sing the love song, We've Got The World, by Keith Molloy and Martin Brannagan, while Simon Casey's song, A Better Plan, is written by Bryan McFadden of Westlife and focuses on the plight of people in war-torn and poverty-stricken countries.
RTÉ yesterday denied reports that Harte and Casey had "snubbed" the station by rejecting a deal to record the winning Eurovision entry song.
The Eurovision hopefuls have already signed a contract committing themselves to representing Ireland in the song contest in Latvia on May 24th and to recording their song for a Eurovision compilation album, should they win the You're A Star competition, a spokeswoman for RTÉ told The Irish Times last night.
The spokeswoman was responding to an article in yesterday's Evening Herald which said that Harte, the favourite to win tonight's competition, had refused to sign up to RTÉ's plans to release his single and had "snubbed" the station's recording contract.
Casey had not signed up to a deal either, the paper said.
As part of the You're A Star prize, the winner gets a management contract and a recording contract. However, the RTÉ spokeswoman said that whoever won was under no obligation to sign to either deal.
"RTÉ introduces the winner to a record company, but it is up to them to hammer out their own deal," she said, and confirmed that both finalists were in negotiation with a recording company, but did not know if they had agreed a deal.
The controversy is the latest in a series of problems to hit the show. The last eliminated contestant, Michael Leonard, complained about a technical hitch which resulted in a brief loss of visuals during his performance of I Couldn't Love You More.
