NewsBrands Ireland is calling for stronger protection for journalists’ sources in the newly published Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill (2025).

While welcoming the decision by the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, to reform legislation on search warrants, including those authorising the seizure and search of electronic devices, NewsBrands cautions that the Bill, as published, fails to recognise the position of the media in a couple of key respects.

NewsBrands Ireland asks that the Bill explicitly recognises the right of journalists to refuse to reveal confidential sources. Ann Marie Lenihan, CEO, NewsBrands Ireland, said: “The Bill needs to explicitly recognise journalistic protection of sources to bring the law into line with recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Irish Supreme Court.  In a 2023 decision, Supreme Court Judge Gerard Hogan stated that: “The general protection of sources is integral to a free press”. He added that, without constitutional protection of the media’s right to protect sources, journalists “cannot be reasonably be expected to discharge their functions of educating public opinion and holding government to account in the manner expressly provided for in article 40.6.1 of the Constitution.”

In addition, the District Court should be empowered to take journalistic privilege into account when considering a Garda application for a search warrant, rather than after the application has been granted. Ms Lenihan said: “The current draft of the Bill proposes that a claim of privilege can only be made to the High Court after an electronic device has been seized on foot of a District Court order and potentially accessed. This is too late, in our view.”.

We are calling for the legislation to ensure that there is a court hearing to determine whether journalistic privilege applies before a warrant can be granted, as is the case in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. This would serve both to vindicate the rights of journalists and the authority of the courts to decide if the privilege should apply.”

NewsBrands has welcomed the Minister’s stated intention to introduce “clear statutory procedures for dealing with privileged material, which recognise the fundamental nature of those principles in areas such as … journalism”.