Former Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes said last night he believed the media should be subjected to "some external check" and "external application of standards" to help increase public confidence in the industry.
Speaking at a debate on press freedom in Cork, Mr Dukes said he was not generally in favour of regulation but there were some areas of the media which gave him cause for concern.
The issue of protecting sources, for example, was an important one and on the face of it seemed a fair and reasonable proposition to argue that the media needed a guarantee of protection for its sources or such sources would otherwise dry up, he said.
"Unfortunately, the pursuit of this particular principle, if indeed it is a principle, has been called into question recently by events in The Irish Times where information about some of the doings in one of our tribunals came to light," he added.
Mr Dukes said that he didn't for a moment call into question the right of the paper to publish the material and he believed it was correct to do so but he had serious concerns about the paper's decision to destroy documentation supporting the story before the tribunal could investigate it.
"It is important that the media be able to protect its sources but I think conduct of that kind which on the face of it seems to be a flagrant violation of the law, and ethics is a matter of some concern - certainly to me - I don't know how far or widespread public concern is."
Mr Dukes also expressed concern about the reluctance of the media to allow any external checking or control and its insistence on self-regulation "jarred" particularly given the media's view that other professions such as law and medicine should be subject to external scrutiny.
"It certainly jarred with me because the media in Ireland and not just in Ireland but elsewhere as well, have been actively and I think rightly suspicious of the idea of self-regulation in other professions," he said.
Press Ombudsman Prof John Horgan said the creation of his office, and the Press Council, had together brought a new degree of accountability to journalism.
But, he said,the new structures on their own were not enough and that newspapers which supported the structures could assist both themselves and the public by being willing to recognise that many complaints had merit.
"They should also be prepared to recognise that complaints which have some merit can often be dealt with expeditiously and civilly by agreement with the complainant on a course of action which avoids recrimination, apologies, condemnation," said Prof Horgan.Prof Horgan pointed out that such an approach also allowed resolution of grievances without recourse to expensive legal action.
The debate at University College Cork was organised jointly by the law society and the journalism society in UCC.
National Union of Journalists Irish secretary Seamus Dooley said he did not accept that the Irish media operated without a leash, arguing that Ireland still retains draconian defamation law which seriously inhibits the work of journalism.
"A depressing feature of the Seanad debates has been the incessant whinging about the ills of the media. The grating noise you hear is the grinding of political axes. Libel reform is not a favour to newspaper owners," he said. Mr Dooley said there were real problems with the Irish media today with editorial decisions being increasingly influenced by commercial considerations.