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THE BELIEF that journalists should not reveal the identities of people who give them information in confidence is not fundamentally about the rights or privileges of the media. It is about the rights of citizens in an open and democratic society. Democracy is fuelled by information. If they are to hold those in power to account, citizens must first know what they are doing. It is crucial, therefore, that people of conscience should be able to reveal unpleasant facts about important matters without being exposed and punished. It is equally essential that the general public should be free to receive that information in a timely manner, so that it can decide for itself what its implications may be.

This is a view which has been consistently upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, but not, until yesterday, by Irish law. It was in this ambivalent context that The Irish Timesreceived, in September 2006, information from an anonymous source that the then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, had accepted substantial payments from private individuals while he was minister for finance. This was, as the Supreme Court acknowledged yesterday, “a matter of public interest which a newspaper would, in the ordinary way, be entitled to print”. More importantly, it was a matter which the public was entitled to know.