A High Court judge has said he will facilitate an early hearing of a dispute over the contract for sponsorship of the weather forecast on RTÉ.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly yesterday entered the matter into the list of the Commercial Court, the commercial division of the High Court, and said that an early hearing would be facilitated after clarification today of issues relating to discovery of documents.

Pat Hanratty SC, for RTÉ, said the sides had agreed that the application by Smart Telecom for an injunction restraining RTÉ from awarding the contract for the sponsorship of the weather forecast to any other company would be treated as the full hearing of the action.

All the sides had agreed the matter was urgent, counsel added.

The proceedings are against RTÉ and Glanbia, which was last week joined as a co-defendant with RTÉ in the case. The central issue in the case is the entitlement to make a referential bid for the weather forecast contract.

Smart, which has sponsored the forecast on a number of radio stations over the past two years, is contending that the process under which the contract may be awarded to Glanbia is invalid because of RTÉ's allegedly contradictory position on the issue of referential bids.

It claims that RTÉ told one bidder for the contract that referential bids would not be accepted and then proceeded to accept such a bid.