RTé has been accused of breaking an agreement with Fair City actors over the internet broadcasting of the popular soap. The dispute, between the broadcaster and the actors' union Equity, has kept Fair City off RTÉ's online player since before Christmas.

Equity said an agreement was made that neither side would make a profit from the online screening of the popular drama, but this was broken by the broadcaster.

"It is common protocol across the world when a programme like this goes on the internet that secondary media costs are paid to the actors," said the union's group secretary, Des Courtney. "However, RTÉ said they could not afford it. We therefore said we would allow it to go on the RTÉ player as long as there was no financial gain for RTÉ, as the actors were receiving no money for this either. The agreement was made, but as soon as the ink had dried on the agreement RTÉ broke it. They ran advertisements before Fair City on the player and they gained commercially from this. They just couldn't help themselves."

The union has now informed RTÉ that it can no longer broadcast the soap online, Courtney said. "We went back and said you have broken the agreement and we will no longer allow the programme to be shown on the internet."

Courtney said no end was in sight to the dispute. He has not been contacted by the station about resolving it. "We have heard nothing back from RTÉ. There have been no moves as of yet to rectify the situation, and we are right now still waiting to see where to go from here."

A spokeswoman for RTÉ said: "We currently don't have on-demand rights for Fair City on the RTÉ player. We hope to be in a position to resolve this in the future."