IRELAND is morally if not technically obliged to introduce legislation protecting the identity of journalists' sources following yesterday's landmark decision by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, a leading expert in Irish media law said.
The decision, which ends a six year legal battle by a British journalist, Mr Bill Goodwin, has been widely welcomed. "It is a very important judgement in that it underscores the relationship between journalists journalists and their sources and recognises the role of the journalist to impart information to the public," said Ms Marie McGonagle, media law lecturer at UCG.
The court ruled that the British government had breached the Human Rights Convention by fining Mr Goodwin £5,000 for refusing to identify the person who gave him financial information about a computer by any of the court's decisions against this country but may not have to introduce legislation until a journalist takes a complaint to Europe, according to Ms McGonagle.
"We have seen in the case of Susan O'Keeffe how vulnerable journalists are. Now there is considerable moral pressure as a result of this judgment to do something about it," she said.
Ms Susan O'Keeffe, the journalists charged for refusing to name her sources at the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Beef Processing Industry, said the judgment was great news. But she said she hoped the Government would not ignore it or put it on the long finger.
"I don't expect miracles to happen," she added. "It's a step in the right direction but I suspect it will take years for the Government to act on it. Governments don't like giving away, especially not to journalists," she said.
The National Union of Journalists, which backed Goodwin and O'Keeffe, said the decision high lighted the Government's failure to protect freedom of expression. The NUJ Irish Secretary, Mr Eoin Ronayne, said Irish laws were seriously out of line with Europe.
He urged the Minister of State, "Ms Eithne Fizgerald, whose Department is drafting a freedom of information Bill, to take account of yesterday's judgment.
Sections of the draft "heads of the Bill" dealing with the protection of "whistle blowers" and ministerial powers to issue Certificates of Exemption appeared to be unacceptably restrictive. They were not in keeping with the broad interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights of the principle of the right to freedom of expression, he said.
The Fianna Fail spokesman one law reform, Mr Willie O'Dea, called for immediate changes to the law which he said would only "be obeyed by a journalist who has "a career death wish".