Irish fans can have their say on favourite acts

THIS year for the first time Irish fans of The X Factor can vote for their favourite acts – which is good news for Mary Byrne, as well as fellow Irish contestants Rebecca Creighton, the Dubliner who is part of the girl group Belle Amie, and Mullingar teen Niall Horan from boyband One Direction.

For the duration of this series, viewers can check the TV3 website at www.tv3.ie/xfactorvote to find the Irish voting numbers for various acts. Those numbers are only available while the voting lines are open over the weekend.

The TV3 press office says that the introduction of the new voting mechanism during last Saturday’s show saw a “massive surge” to their website, with 120,000 hits per minute. Irish viewing figures reached 706,000 on Saturday, and 751,000 for the results show on Sunday.

Irish fans have been demanding a right to vote on the show for years now, and indeed last year viewers here found an illegitimate loophole through which to cast their votes.

A firm had set up a legal telephone exchange to route calls through London to X Factor numbers. However, this option was soon closed off.