Irish Film and Television Academy (Ifta) chief executive Áine Moriarty has blamed technical issues for the poor sound quality of Saturday night’s award ceremony.

Ms Moriarty explained audience microphones were left open for the last segment of the show which gave the impression the crowd were drowning out the sound of the presenters and award recipients.

Saturday night's ceremony provoked a storm of protest on social media and yesterday's Liveline programme on RTÉ Radio One.

RTÉ is to carry out a review of Saturday night's show following complaints from viewers. A statement from RTÉ acknowledged there were technical issues with the sound on Saturday night.

Viewer feedback

The broadcaster said it was “standard practice to review all aspects of the production, taking into account feedback from viewers. This process is now under way.”

The Irish Film Board also expressed disappointment at what had happened on Saturday night, with chief executive James Hickey saying it would be reviewing its involvement.

Ms Moriarty said the problems emerged between the third and final segment of the shows when the technical awards were being handed out.

The audience microphones were left open and not closed for the final section of the show which was broadcast live.

She said it was unfair to blame the audience for what transpired on Saturday night. "It's not a fair reflection of the people in the room. You could see for the first three parts that there was a very good audience. There was a lot of awards to get through."

'Too many' awards

She acknowledged that 40 awards is too many and they will now have to review the number of categories for next year. “It is difficult to do all these awards on the same night. It has become problematic. There’s just too many.”

She added it had looked at splitting up the television and film into different awards in the past but the consensus across the industry was that they should be held together.

This year’s awards were watched by an average audience of 382,300.