IRELAND WILL switch off its analogue television system by 2012 and move to digital terrestrial television (DTT), Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan has insisted, despite the decision of a company to withdraw from negotiations to provide the service.

Mr Ryan said “it is a real concern and it is a pity” that a contract could not be agreed, but the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) had an alternative biddger.

The UK is switching off its analogue services in different regions and services in Wales are due to be switched off in autumn this year.

“This is likely to impact viewers along the southeast of the country who receive overspill of the UK channels,” he said.

However Fine Gael communications spokesman Simon Coveney said that “to give the impression that the pull-out by the Boxer consortium has caused nothing more than a need for the BCI to move on to the next bidder, namely OneVision, and to proceed as if there is no problem is totally misrepresenting the situation”.

He said that OneVision, made up of broadcaster Setanta Ireland, Eircom and TV3, were “all good companies but all of them are under severe financial pressure at present”.

RTÉ had already spent €40 million on DTT and the Minister would make life “financially impossible” for RTÉ if he insisted that it had three or four free-to-air channels on DTT by the end of the year, in the absence of a commercial operator.

Mr Ryan agreed that RTÉ was under pressure but there was a “fundamental reality” that they would switch off the analogue service in 2012.

Labour spokeswoman Liz McManus questioned why such an extended time was given to the consortium, which walked away from the contract “which it did not sign, after eight months”.

She expressed concern that they would end up in another eight or nine months’ time “with an unholy mess on our hands”.