If a garda wants to search the premises of a well-known journalist under the new legislation, he or she will have to notify the District Court judge in advance that the premises is that of a journalist and the person he or she is seeking a search warrant for is a journalist. If a garda goes into the premises of a well-known journalist and says they have a search warrant, that person is not mute or incapable of stating the garda cannot search their computer because it is protected by journalistic privilege.
If they get a search warrant they have no idea that there may be any journalistic privilege involved and the person who is searched says, "Hold on, I am a journalist and I assert journalistic privilege over this." If a person does that then there will be a procedure exercise, for the purpose of the court, looking at it.
Key terms by TF-IDF across 8,362 words from 12 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Victor Boyhan and Michael McDowell; Níl, Senators Garret Ahearn and Paul Daly.
Party shown is the one each member held on 2026-05-26, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.