Producers of the RTÉ show You're A Star last night confirmed there had been "concern and upset" among the show's contestants about failures in the voting process.
A spokeswoman for ShinAwil Productions which produces the talent series for RTÉ, denied however, that contestants were threatening to strike because "thousands" of votes had been discounted due to problems in the voting process. She was responding to a report in yesterday's Sunday World newspaper.
Ms Susan Dempsey, spokeswoman for ShinAwil, said problems arose with the voting and results collating because of the "phenomenal demand" to vote.
"Half a million people are watching this every week and 300,000 people are voting. We did anticipate there would be that many in the later weeks of the show but the interest has just been phenomenal, beyond our expectations."
The contest, which has been screened every Sunday for 15 weeks, is to choose Ireland's entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest in May. Contestants perform live and viewers vote in the hour after the show, by either ringing numbers assigned to performers, or by texting their vote from a mobile phone. The contestant with the least votes is eliminated. An RTÉ spokeswoman said that although some votes were lost when lines jammed, no individual contestant lost out "because votes were lost randomly across the board".
