RTE says it has reduced the height of a controversial fence around its transmitter on Mount Leinster so the station no longer requires to apply for planning permission.
A protest meeting will take place on Saturday over RTE's decision to fence off the top of the mountain, making it inaccessible to recreational users.
The fence has brought the State broadcaster E into conflict with Carlow County Council, which wrote to the station on August 29th pointing out that the structure was unauthorised and required planning permission. It gave the station a month to apply for permission to retain the fence.
A spokeswoman for RTE said yesterday that the height of the fence had been reduced to two metres and therefore planning permission would no longer be required.
Mr Liam Fitzgerald, the council's senior executive engineer in charge of planning, confirmed that the local authority would have no role to play if the fence was two metres high. However, he added, a reply had not been received to the letter sent to RTE last month and he would be investigating the matter this week.
Ms Mary White, a Green Party member of the council and the party's national spokeswoman on the environment, said a "major protest rally" would take place at the Nine Stones, at the foot of the mountain, at 3 p.m. next Saturday.
She said RTE had removed the barbed wire from the top of the fence but in doing so was just "tinkering around" with the planning system. "The people of the area are totally committed to the removal of that fence."
Mr Eamonn Moore of An Taisce's Carlow branch and Mr Joss Lynam, a well-known hill-walker, are to address the rally. Ms White said the intention was to highlight, not just the "deeply repugnant" fencing off of the mountain top, but the environmental damage which, she claimed, the fence had caused.
She also said that farmers who had grazing rights on the mountain were concerned that 3 1/2 acres had been fenced off without prior consultation with them.