AN IRISH TV station which runs a late-night sex-chat programme has defended the service saying it was not breaching any regulations.

Party People, which airs on City Channel, features scant­ily clad young women lying in bed and suggests viewers call premium phone numbers to get through to them. In fact, viewers are put through to a standard phone sex-chat line, which is charg­ed at more than €1 a minute.

David Harvey, the former Crimeline presenter who owns the TV station, said the service was not "prostitution" and was being hosted by City Channel on behalf of another Irish company, Black Dog Communications.

The programme has already been subject to an investigation by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC), which made a finding that it was not "sexually explicit material" and not in breach of regulations.

It emerged during their investigation that City Channel had been showing another programme called Office Babes, which had to be pulled because it was "too saucy".

The BCC said there had been issues with the scheduling of that programme and that it was "sexually explicit". However, it said City Channel had already removed the offending programme and that had "sufficiently resolved the complaint", that:?"A broadcaster is entitled to include sexual content in its programme schedule."

City Channel chief executive David Harvey said: "I am not going to be po-faced about this. We take our responsibilities very seriously but get this material from a third party. Office Babes was a bit too saucy for us and it was removed from the air.

"We had already made changes even before this complaint was made. We had Office Babes and felt it was a little bit over the top. We knew when we saw it that there would be a few phone calls.

"By the end of January, we had already got rid of it and replaced it with the Party People programme. There is not huge money in this. We do not take the risk of revenue share; it is not our type of business."