The decision by RTE to broadcast the Marian Finucane interview with Patrick Magee on yesterday's edition of her radio show must have implications for the future direction of RTE's general editorial policies in its news and current affairs output.

At the editorial meeting held some day last week in advance of this week's broadcasting on both radio and television, and normally chaired by the director general, who is also editor in chief of the publicly-funded national broadcaster, a discussion would normally have taken place about the desirability of such an interview, and of the approach to be adopted by the producer and the interviewer in relation to it.

Undoubtedly the radio personnel at that meeting would have put forward the view that such an interview would raise the profile of the programme and boost the ratings at the start of the autumn schedule.

It would be expected that questions would have been asked as to why such an interview should take place over a week after Magee first surfaced in the Sunday Business Post. Presumably the radio editorial staff would have argued that the Marian Finucane interview would, through the skill of the interviewer, elicit new material and that that would enhance the public service role of RTE, and indeed bring the material to the attention of a much wider audience than the readership of the Sunday Business Post.

Some at the director general's editorial meeting might have argued that the very proposal might infringe the requirements of the Broadcasting Acts in the matter of peace and reconciliation in the island of Ireland as a whole, and others might have said that Magee's time in prison and his having paid his debt to society, and indeed his undoubted achievements in formal education while imprisoned, would indeed mark part of the process of reconciliation and forgiveness inherent in the Good Friday agreement.

In truth, what Magee achieved in his interview was a considerable psychological victory for Sinn Fein as the truly nationalist party in Northern Ireland and, indeed, in Ireland as a whole. A party once excluded by the British, the unionists, and, as it would seem, by the SDLP, is now, and was sold by Magee as, the major force in the process of political reconstruction in, and of, the island of Ireland.

Magee's interview justified the use of violence - including the murder of the five people at Brighton* and the many others who were maimed in that horrific act of war. Ominously, Magee said, in refusing to discuss the details of the operation at Brighton, "that Brighton is still close to home and at this stage we haven't really got peace yet" and "it is too soon to talk about the operational side of the Brighton bombing".

Asked by Marian Finucane to conduct a "moral audit" (his words), he said: "I don't think there was another way of doing it" and he was not referring to another way of bombing the Grand Hotel.

What concerns me here is that the RTE senior editorial personnel at the director general's meeting must have been aware of what Magee was going to say, however much Marian Finucane might have been coached with question-and-answer sessions. RTE will claim, undoubtedly, that it was in the public interest that such an interview be done. In RTE's current funding dilemma it was in its interest to have a controversial and high-profile interview and essentially to boost ratings.

There is, however, a price to be paid for such an interview, and that price will ultimately purchase a Trojan horse. What will happen in the future when, for example, the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe are released? Or does the Magee interview set a precedent only for murders and acts of war carried out in the United Kingdom?

There is a danger at all times that what the tabloid press does today, the quality broadsheets do tomorrow, the curious logic being that the story, having been carried by the tabloids, means the broadsheets are no longer bound by responsibility and that the snake is let out of the pit.

RTE did not, of course, break the original Magee story, but once published, RTE sees no difficulty in abandoning all its editorial responsibilities and swimming with the sharks.

THE editorial position of the Sunday Business Post on nationalism and Northern Ireland is clear and I read that paper myself not only for its excellent business and communications coverage but also to connect with the rather "green" view of Ireland held by that paper's editor.

I see no reason, however, why the national broadcaster should provide a platform for those who have been involved in murdering my neighbours - and such a platform was given to Mr Magee and, in my view, for secondary issues of ratings rather than in the public interest.

I would like to know exactly what editorial discussions took place at the director general's meeting of last week and how and why it was that Patrick Magee was allowed to address the Irish audience for 50 minutes?

* Magee was convicted of the October 1984 Brighton bombing in which the following people died: Sir Anthony Berry, Conservative Party MP for Enfield Southgate; Jeanne Shattock, wife of the chairman of the Conservative Party association western area; Anne Roberta Wakeham, wife of the chief whip of the Conservative Party; Muriel MacLean, wife of the chairman of the Conservative Party association in Scotland; and Eric Taylor, chairman of the Conservative Party north-west area. Magee was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment and had served 14 when he was released under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.

Muiris Mac Conghail is a former controller of television programmes at RTE. He teaches at the school of media in the Dublin Institute of Technology