Be part of Prime Time's election coverage

By Mark Little

Prime Time

There’s a choice for a programme like Prime Time at election time, we can invite politicians and pundits into our studio to tell us what’s going on - or we can make a damn good effort to canvas as many voters as is humanly possible to find out what is on their minds. Now, we’ll do a bit of the former, but this time ‘round we’re determined to do as much of the latter as we possibly can, and we need your help.

My own task this election season is to work out what forces will shape the European Elections in Ireland. I am particularly interested in the great contradiction at play. We are about to take part in the biggest trans-national elections in world history with 736 MEPs elected to represent some 500 million Europeans. And yet it does seem that local and national issues - not the future of the European project - will shape the way people vote in each of the four Irish constituencies.

Now, that is my initial impression but I am open to contradiction. Perhaps I’m missing a deeper connection to big European issues like energy, immigration, security and Lisbon Part Deux? But my guess is this European poll is all about - to use an immortal phrase - the economy, stupid.

I’ll be travelling along the River Shannon in the coming week, passing through three of the four Euro constituencies, meeting voters and hearing their concerns and probing their connection to (or disconnection from) Europe. If you live in Athlone, Carrick-on-Shannon, Limerick, Banagher, Shannonbridge or any other town along the river, we’d love to hear from you, please do e-mail your ideas, comments and suggestions to primetime[at]rte[dot]ie, or contact us on Twitter. You can also leave a comment on this blog. If there is a specific local issue you think will influence voters in the Euro elections, let us know about it. We're also looking at using tools from another website to collect video comments from viewers, as one can imagine that takes some planning, so stay with the blog and we'll have more on that in the next few days...

While I’m here…

We also need help with our two special election editions of Prime Time. Miriam will be hosting a special on the local elections on Thursday, May 28^th and I will be presenting the Euro election special on Tuesday, June 2^nd. We’re inviting politicians into the studio and would love to be able to challenge them with questions and comments and concerns from you, the voter and viewer. I’ll be straight with you, we won’t be able to use everything you send us but the more feedback we get between now and the election debates, the better we will be able to represent you in studio.

You can email us your questions to primetime[at]rte[dot] ie or if it relates to the topic of one of our posts, leave a comment below. All we ask is you use your real name and email address and that you respect RTE must abide by rules and adhere to certain guidelines, this is something of a first for RTE so we hope you can appreciate that.

Stay with us in the days ahead and let’s see how much we can collectively influence and interpret the story-line of this election season.