There has been an exciting development in my campaign (see my earlier posts: here, here and here) to persuade RTÉ to make the Prime Time leaders’ debates available online without restriction. I received the following letter from Fianna Fáil (for reasons of accuracy, I have retyped it as it came in (here’s the PDF), including the not uncommon mis-spelling of my name, which I will forgive as I welcome the rest of it!):

Dr. Eoin O’Neill
School of Law
Trinity College
Dublin 2

14th May 2007

Dear Dr. O’Neill,

I refer to your letter to An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern TD, who has asked me to reply directly to you on his behalf.

Fianna Fáil would be in full agreement that the Leaders debate should be accessible to as wide an audience as possible. It is a crucial part of the General Election campaign and for many people plays a key role deciding their voting intentions.

We fully support your proposal and will make our views in this regard known to RTE.

Kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

________________
Gerry Hickey
Special Advisor to An Taoiseach

It’s still not too late for the other party leaders to come on board or for RTÉ to change their minds. So, come on guys, how about it?

Bonus links: (i) Larry Lessig’s most recent post about his similar campaign in the US (which inspired mine); (ii) Wednesday’s Prime Time debate from RTÉ’s website; (iii) Thursday’s Prime Time debate from RTÉ’s website – the debates are available on their website, but is a pity we can’t legally share and reuse them online without fear of infringing RTÉ’s copyright.