RTÉ have secured exclusive live rights to GAA championship matches over the next three seasons. The deal hasn't been fully thrashed out, as there are remaining packages to be finalised, such as overseas, internet and WAP rights but the cost is believed to be well in excess of the €2,000,000 of the previous agreement.

It is good news for the State broadcaster, who recently concluded rights negotiations for soccer internationals and Six Nations rugby.

There had been speculation that RTÉ would have to concede a package of live championship rights to Setanta Sports, the new sports channel in Ireland, who were also part of the bidding process. Instead Setanta will, like TG4, have access to repeat showings of championship fixtures and will screen a highlights programme midweek, the first such broadcast on an Irish commercial station and a package that establishes a solid Gaelic games presence on the new channel.

"It's good news for the punters," according to RTÉ head of television sport Glen Killane, "because it means these matches will be free-to-air as well as to RTÉ, which faced strong competition for these rights. But we view these as absolutely a core policy from a cultural as well as a sporting perspective and are very pleased with the deal.

"We might end up covering more games, even though there are no extra live windows, but we will be looking at a deferred access slot on Saturday evenings.

"That will be a flexible situation. The qualifiers might be said to have under-performed in that there were a number of attractive teams involved last year, such as Dublin and Tyrone, but the draw didn't always work out so well. We will be waiting to see the draws before committing ourselves."

The GAA also indicated they wished to avoid "over-exposure" or impacting on the clubs by restricting coverage to three live matches plus one deferred broadcast per weekend during the championship and two live plus one deferred during the league.

In 2004, four of the five highest rated sports events shown by RTÉ were GAA events, with the All-Ireland football final at number one attracting 743,000 viewers. Overall, Gaelic games accounted for five of the top 10 viewing audiences on RTÉ.

Although Setanta will be disappointed not to have secured a chunk of the live championship action, their rights will enable the new station to schedule Gaelic games all year around, from Saturday club matches, evening National League fixtures - which have been good performers for TG4 - and deferred coverage of championship fixtures, which will enable them to broadcast preview and review programmes, which depend on availability of match footage.

"We went to the GAA and asked them to accept the argument that it was a good thing there was now an Irish sports channel," said Setanta chief executive Niall Cogley. "We didn't want to ask any federation to do something they were uncomfortable with so we presented a range of packages to them and this is the one they accepted."

The reference to the GAA being uncomfortable goes back to an interview in this newspaper with GAA director general Liam Mulvihill in which he seemed to indicate a strong preference for keeping the main domestic rights on a free-to-air basis.

"We don't have the games coming in from abroad that other organisations have," he said, "so we depend very much on television to promote ourselves.

"So that's number one: exposure. We're not going to go to a broadcaster that only gives you 25 per cent of exposure by contrast with one that gives you 98 per cent - unless there were a huge financial offer and there's no sign of that.

"All things being equal we're going to be in bed with a terrestrial Irish broadcaster going forward and money isn't going to be the major issue. For me the bigger issues relate to the quality of the coverage and its modernising.

"I was very much in favour of what RTÉ did last season with regard to The Sunday Game. I know some people felt that getting rid of the old signature tune was a break with the past but you have to move on and I felt that they did a lot of good things that maybe were overlooked. And good quality coverage is for me the most important aspect of the rights package," Mulvihill said

None the less Setanta will now be able to present GAA programming on a regular basis. "It suits us perfectly," said Cogley. "We have rights across the summer and also live rights to league. I suppose you could view live championship as the premium tier of the rights but we will be trying to develop the league to the point where it's in and around the same level."

Landing the rights to evening National League fixtures is a boost for Setanta. In the past few years, TG4 have had full rights to the league and some of their most successful broadcasts have been on Saturday and, this year, Friday evenings. Setanta have a major presence on the east coast where they are part of the basic NTL cable package and from this year Dublin have the facility to stage floodlit matches so that will suit the channel's largest catchment.

TG4 have spearheaded greatly expanded league coverage over the course of their rights to the competition, which expire at the end of the current NFL and NHL campaigns. The new agreements run a year behind the championship deals, commencing in 2006.

Setanta are also in the running for the overseas rights, which they have held over the last two agreement periods.