The general secretary of the National of Journalists in Ireland, Seamus Dooley, has said that at the heart of the BBC’s legal process to establish whether a senior journalist was subjected to alleged police surveillance, was the operation of a secretive process called the Independent Powers Tribunal.
Mr Dooley told RTÉ radio’s News at One that the NUJ had not been surprised that many journalists had been under surveillance by the PSNI.
The chief constable had confirmed to the Policing Board in Northern Ireland that there were 18 PSNI spying incidents. “He confirmed this last month involving, interestingly, both journalists and lawyers, not more than ten of each. So it's all right, apparently. And I would worry when he talks about due process.
"That due process is secretive, and there's no guarantee that Vincent Kearney's case would even be held in public.”
Mr Dooley said he was concerned that a tribunal, as was being requested by the BBC, could take years.
There was already compelling evidence on record that the surveillance did happen which had been confirmed by the chief constable and the PSNI to the Policing Board.
Lawyers and journalists were there to hold other people to account, he said. Surveillance of them was "a strike at the very heart of democracy.”
“What's really disturbing about this particular incident is that Vincent Kearney is a highly accomplished investigative journalist working on Spotlight, which itself is one of the show pieces of BBC and was investigating inappropriate relationships between the office of the Police Ombudsman and the police. And the police then appear to have investigated Vincent Kearney's activities.
"And by definition, that would have to involve trying to look at his sources. So here we are on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, looking at the PSNI, pursuing yet again sources, which is exactly what happened with McCaffrey and Birney.”
Mr Dooley said it was not good enough for the Chief Constable to say ‘we're going to go see that due process is observed.’
“We do not approve of the Independent Powers Tribunal. We don't approve of secretive tribunals. Why doesn't he come out and admit now whatever happened. The Chief Constable has it within his powers to explain now to the BBC what happened. We don't need a full legal process.
"I do not believe there could be any justification for spying on the basis of merely to find out who snitched on the relationship between the office of the Ombudsman the PSNI.”
