RTE'S LIVE coverage of Gaelic games this summer features 24 matches due to be broadcast throughout the summer. In addition to the traditional Sunday Game highlights programme which will go out as usual every Sunday evening, a mid-week magazine devoted to GAA matters will be broadcast every week.

The schedule is the most extensive undertaken by the station and will get under way this weekend with live coverage of the Ulster championship match between Down and Tyrone in Clones.

"This is the first ever full season of live matches," said The Sunday Game series producer, Bill Lalor. According to the programme's editor, Maurice Reidy, some of the matches in the National Hurling League, which for the first time is taking place during the summer, will also be covered.

Details were announced yesterday at a press launch at RTE's headquarters in Montrose, Dublin. Joe McDonagh, the president of the GAA made what was in the circumstances of recent friction between the association and RTE, a conciliatory speech during which he referred to the suggestion that GAA matches might in the future end up being broadcast on a pay-per-view basis.

"The GAA's only concern," he said, "is the quality, quantity and consistency of television exposure to the widest possible audience at home right through the island of Ireland and by extension abroad. I believe RTE are making great strides in this respect and without prejudice to our own right to derive optimum benefit from television, the relationship which we have will continue and we look forward to that marketing partnership - as we now call it - flourishing in the future."