"Are you accusing me of lying?" the former Labour adviser and present-day lobbyist, Fergus Finlay, pointedly asked Jackie Gallagher on RTE television last Thursday. Gallagher is himself a lobbyist who previously earned his wages as a political adviser with Fianna Fail.

The two men, who co-host the RTE television programme Later with Finlay and Gallagher, were discussing who knew what about the 1996 donation to the Labour Party by Woodchester Bank. This donation nicely cancelled out a £28,000 debt run up at Woodchester for Orla Guerin's unsuccessful European election campaign in 1994.

Finlay was one of the four people who personally guaranteed the Guerin loan.

"The presenter is part of the story," Gallagher observed, as the rights and wrongs of the Woodchester debt were tossed about on the programme with two politicians and two journalists.

Indeed, having the presenter so central to the story was no bad thing. At least the viewer got to know exactly where Finlay was coming from. But it is not always so.

On a recent edition of the programme, when the DIRT inquiry was being discussed, Gallagher failed to declare his own interest as a lobbyist for the State-owned ACC which was under intense investigation over its handling of bogus non-resident accounts. Indeed, he even went so far as to describe the controversy over the non-payment of the tax as ancient history.

The two programme hosts are professional lobbyists earning a living from clients who employ them to advance and protect particular interests. Finlay heads up the lobbying arm of Wilson Hartnell Public Relations while Gallagher is one of the directors of the lobbying firm Kelly and Gallagher. This is big business, with big money at stake for both the lobbyists and their clients.

But just who are these clients and what are their particular interests? Certainly the RTE viewers have not been told. And that is the fundamental problem faced by the national broadcaster with the Later with Finlay and Gallagher programme.

The politicians who appear on the programme every week are democratically answerable. They are also required to adhere to strict rules and regulations in relation to donations under the Ethics Act.

But the lobbyists - who have become a significant political force in their own right - are not answwerable. And at present there is no way of assessing how much influence these people exert over the Government's policy-formation process. Their former political persuasions may be out in the open but the businesses that have contracted them as lobbyists are shrouded in secrecy.

Gallagher, who also previously worked as a journalist with this newspaper, asked one of his guests for an opinion on the content of the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrat revised Programme for Government, published earlier in the week.

Perhaps more importantly, the question which needed an answer was what Gallagher and his clients make of the document, which was an update of the original policy programme which the former Fianna Fail adviser would have helped develop in 1997.

With the Later with Finlay and Gallagher programme it could be argued that the national broadcaster is being unfair to its licence-paying viewers. Moreover, there is also the serious issue of the apparent contempt which senior management in RTE appears to be displaying towards its statutory obligations under the Broadcasting Act.

(And at this juncture this reporter should declare his employment as a journalist with RTE News from 1995 until July of this year).

Section 18.1 of the Broadcasting Bill obliges RTE to ensure that "the broadcast treatment of current affairs, including matters which are either of public controversy or the subject of current political debate, is fair to all interests concerned and that the broadcast matter is presented in an objective and impartial manner".

RTE cannot slink away from this obligation with the claim that the Later with Finlay and Gallagher programme does not come within its current affairs output. Analyse the content. Look at the guests. The programme deals with matters that are both of public controversy and subject to current political debate.

The content of last Thursday night's edition of the programme was similar to that beamed out every week from RTE headquarters in Montrose to thousands of homes around the State. The viewing public gets to see Finlay, Gallagher and their guests trade jibes over cups of coffee as the discussion revolves around the cut and thrust of political life and the controversial political events of the week.

The role of the lobbyist is not just an issue for consideration by RTE. They have long been a feature of the Irish political system. As far back as the 1920s, when the ESB was being established, lobbyists from Germany and America made representations to senior civil servants for business.

However, over the last decade a new breed of lobbyist has emerged. Finlay and Gallagher are, courtesy of RTE, the most visible because their television position gives them a public platform.

Their role as lobbyists is to advance the interests of their clients using the experience, insights and contacts built up from their days working inside the governmental system. Unlike politicians, however, they are not required to declare their clients, who can often be at the centre of the story of the week.

Lobbyists cut across party lines. Some are names - if not faces - known to the public. They include P.J. Mara, a former press officer for Fianna Fail and Charles Haughey, and Stephen O'Byrnes, a former press officer for the Progressive Democrats.

Also among their ranks is another former Fianna Fail official, Frank Dunlop, who had his own profile boosted as the co-host with Finlay on the first run of Later with . . .