Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte has called on all Dáil parties to work together to devise a way to ensure TDs can protect the confidentiality of their dealings with the public in the wake of yesterday's Supreme Court decision.
Mr Rabbitte said yesterday he is to seek an early meeting of the Dáil's Committee on Procedure and Privileges on the matter, and called on the Taoiseach to support this call to deal with the serious situation that has now arisen.
The judgment had profound implications for all TDs and the issues arising from the judgment will now have to be dealt with collectively by the Oireachtas, he added.
Mr Rabbitte said the judgment clearly has the potential to discourage "whistle blowers" from approaching TDs with confidential information on matters of public importance. Unless action is taken to deal with the issues in the judgment by extending further the right of TDs to protect sources of information, the relationship between members of the Dáil and their constituents will be changed forever, he said.
A Fine Gael spokesman said last night the party was sympathetic to the call for a meeting of the procedure committee to consider the matter. He said the court ruling raised concerns about the implications for any Oireachtas member in receipt of confidential information about important issues.
Mr Rabbitte noted that the judgment had found that Mr Howlin had acted quite properly in bringing the information he received directly and privately to the Minister for Justice.
Mr Howlin said: "Had I stood up in the Dáil and read my concerns in the public record I would have been fine.
"By acting responsibly in taking it quietly and discreetly to the Minister for Justice, I deprived myself of the protection I would have got if I had acted irresponsibly."
He said the question of taking a case to the European Court of Justice was for another day. He had been fighting this issue personally for some time, and he hoped the Dáil, through its Committee on Procedure and Privileges, would now take it on.
Fine Gael MEP Jim Higgins, who was also ordered by the tribunal to reveal his sources in February 2003, said yesterday he would be asking his legal team to look at whether an appeal to the European Court of Justice might be useful. He said he was taken aback by the judgment.
"What we did was absolutely responsible. We received information, made one to one contact with the minister of the day, we never put it into the public domain.
"We didn't use Dáil privilege because we felt it might be an abuse if we named names but were unable to stand up the allegations outside the Dáil," he said.
The Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, Séamus Dooley, said the judgment could have profound implications for the concept of parliamentary privilege and the wider issue of the protection of sources by politicians and journalists.