RTÉ has admitted a computer problem resulted in a substantial number of text votes for its hugely popular You're A Startelevision show not being counted last weekend.
The national broadcaster said the issue occurred during the public vote on the show on January 27th.
"As a result, a significant number of text votes received by RTÉ's service provider, Xiam Interactive, were not counted in the final vote tally," RTÉ said in a statement.
"Although RTÉ queried the number of votes that were reported, Xiam indicated that the system was operating correctly.
"However following a detailed technical audit at the post event stage, it was identified that a technical fault had occurred on the Xiam platform. It was caused by a manual configuration change on the platform prior to the event. As a result not all received votes were represented in the vote report interface."
RTÉ said that following the technical audit, all votes were recounted and the final outcome remained unchanged, with contestant Conan Lindsay being automatically eliminated from the competition and Black Daisy and Peter Karpienia participating in the 'sing-off'.
"Xiam has accepted full responsibility for this fault and has provided RTÉ with a full incident report," RTÉ said.
The broadcaster said You're A Starvote events are monitored live by representatives from RTÉ and an independent auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
"RTÉ has conducted an operational and technical review with the service provider. A number of actions have been agreed to ensure this problem does not recur. Xiam will ensure that viewers whose votes were not counted on the night will be refunded in full."
The revelation follows a number of similar incidents in Britain last year. In one case, ITV was hit with a cost of £18 million to compensate viewers for a fake phone-in scandal involving X-Factorand Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.