Lynda Meegan v Times Newspapers Ltd Trading as the Sunday Times

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: Mr. Justice Meenan
• Judgment Date: 02 July 2021
• Neutral Citation: [2021] IEHC 495
• Docket Number: [2014 No. 9351 P]
• Court: High Court

Between

Lynda Meegan

Plaintiff

and

Times Newspapers Limited Trading as the Sunday Times

Defendant

[2021] IEHC 495

[2014 No. 9351 P]

THE HIGH COURT

JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Meenan delivered on the 2nd day of July, 2021.

The proceedings

1 In these proceedings, the plaintiff claims damages for alleged defamation on foot of an article that was published by the defendant in the Sunday Times on 14 September 2014. The article was published under the headline:-

“Convicted bomb-maker was recipient of garda intelligence.”

The complained of article further stated that:-

“A SENIOR figure in the Continuity IRA (CIRA) has been identified by Special Branch as the person who received sensitive intelligence from a former garda about operations against dissident republicans.

—-

The female officer is said to have sent texts to Fee alerting him to the identities of dissidents arrested by gardai. The texts were intercepted by Crime and Security, the garda agency responsible for spying on dissidents.

The officer, who cannot be named, resigned after being confronted. …”

2 A Statement of Claim pleads that the former member of An Garda Síochána to whom the article referred is the plaintiff.

Application for third party discovery

3 A motion for third party discovery was brought against the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána, seeking discovery of a report prepared for the Minister for Justice, dated 1 October 2014, in relation to the provision of confidential information by a serving member of An Garda Síochána to dissident republicans.

4 On 25 March 2019, the High Court (Barr J.) made an Order, on consent, that the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána make discovery of:-

“The report prepared for the Minister for Justice dated the 1st October 2014 in relation to the provision of confidential information by a serving member of An Garda Síochána to dissident republicans.”

5 Subsequently, an affidavit of discovery was sworn by John Finucane, a Garda Inspector who was duly authorised to make the affidavit on behalf of the Commissioner.

6 The said report was set out in the second part of the first schedule of the affidavit of discovery as the Garda Commissioner objected to produce the said document. The grounds for such objection were set out as follows in the said affidavit:-

“4. The grounds on which I object to produce these last mentioned documents are that such are covered by Public Interest privilege, in the interest of preserving An Garda Síochána's ability to effectively investigate crime and Garda tradecraft, and in the interests of protecting informants.”

7 The application before the Court concerns the scope of the public interest privilege being asserted. The said report was made available to the Court so that it could be considered and any necessary redactions could be made.

Principles to be applied

8 Both the defendant and the Commissioner accepted that the law on public interest privilege was as is set out in Abrahamson, Dwyer and Fitzpatrick, Discovery and Disclosure (3rd ed., Round Hall, 2019), as follows:-

“Unlike other forms of privilege, public interest privilege is not absolute and in determining whether a document should be disclosed, the courts will balance the public interest relied upon by the State as a justification for refusing to disclose the document against the public interest that is served by the...