Garda Síochána (Powers) Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-26 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland I fully accept that the privilege still exists but what is the consequence if the file can be read by a garda who, bona fide, believes the file is there and is evidence relating to the commission of an offence? There is no protection at all for the journalist in those circumstances. The garda has actually taken the file out of the car, read it, shut it and put it back in the car and knows precisely what is in it. The garda has invaded the journalist's privilege successfully and, because no warrant was involved, he now knows what he could not have achieved if he had waited for that file to get back to the journalist's house. If we are going to protect journalists in the circumstances referred to by the Supreme Court in the Emmett Corcoran case, why are we not going to say that a member of An Garda Síochána shall not deploy the powers under section 10 of a stop and search with a view to getting or seeing material which would be privileged if it were the subject of a search warrant? The Minister has not dealt with that issue. Under the Schedule, we are dealing with any offence of theft of any kind whatsoever. That is not something that is going to bring down the State or which amounts to murder, manslaughter or an offence under the Offences Against the State Act. Any offence of theft is covered by this. If I believe that a journalist has any material in his possession which, if I see it, will enable me to effectively breach his or her privilege, and I deploy my powers under sections 9 or 10 of this Bill of stop and search, there is no protection at all for the journalist to say, "Sorry, you cannot look at the notebook in the car". Worse still, there is nothing there to say that a garda who decides to do that is acting unlawfully. There is nothing there to effectively protect the journalist who is stopped on the street or is in a car that is stopped on the street, whether as the driver or the passenger, and who has documentary material in his or her possession, having it read by the Garda on a deliberate basis. There is nothing there to prevent that situation. I fully understand that the Minister is meeting the Emmett Corcoran decision in the Supreme Court, and that he rightly says members of the Supreme Court said this should be urgently addressed, but what about the point I am making? The Minister referred to the fact that a defence lawyer leaving court could resist his brief being grabbed by a member of An Garda Síochána with a view to just nosing through it on the basis that there could be evidence of an offence committed in it. I fully understand that but a journalist is given no right to resist a search of his or her documents in a stop-and-search situation as envisaged by section 10. It does not appear there is any law in Ireland that says the fruits of such a search, if conducted lawfully, cannot be used to mount or pursue an investigation such as there is in the United States. I am not suggesting we should have exclusionary rules such as those the United States has, but I do think the Minister is not facing up to the searches of journalists, or of documents that are in their possession or power, which are not the subject of a prior warrant application to a District Court judge. We should cover that situation. I am mindful of one other thing. There is a whole crowd of yahoos going around now with their cameras up claiming to be journalists. For some of them, if it was not so ridiculous it would be absurd and perhaps harmful. There are people posting stuff on social media and claiming to be a journalist whose function is to go around harassing people by putting a phone camera in their faces. They then claim they are journalists. I fully appreciate that the claim to be a journalist is a difficult one. Maybe, in the context of a warrant for a search being applied for, a court would say that this is not a journalist at all but a local gouger wandering around with a camera phone in his pocket, and that it is not what the European Convention on Human Rights is concerned with at all. However, I ask the Minister to deal with the question regarding what protection a journalist has, who might have their papers, notebooks and things like that in his or her car as they drive in public. What effective protection have they in a stop-and-search situation, when sections 9 and 10 are so open to their use by gardaí to look at particular materials and invade the journalist's journalistic privilege? If a garda can look at a journalist's papers on foot of a power of search not requiring a warrant of any kind, it will happen. As sure as night follows day, when confronted with the difficulties of getting at such material by means of a search warrant, it would be so easy to just stop the journalist on the street and see if they can get that material from them under a power of search that is not the subject matter of a warrant, as arose in the Emmett Corcoran case. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-26/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:59+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-26