Privacy cases will be increasingly likely to come before Irish courts, regardless of whether privacy laws are introduced, legal experts predicted yesterday.
Such cases are becoming more common in British and European courts and because of European and Irish constitutional rights to privacy, it is only a matter of time before the trend becomes apparent in the Republic, a conference on privacy law was told in Dublin yesterday.
The conference, organised by the Irish Centre for European Law, was told by senior counsel and media law expert Eoin McCullogh that the constitutional right to privacy and the right to claim damages for breach of that right were already recognised in Irish case law.
However, Mr McCullogh warned that the Government's proposed privacy Bill would be far more rigid than the evolution of privacy rights through court judgments.
The proposed law could have wide-ranging effects, and would allow for complainants to have negligence and defamation actions heard in private, enable individuals to complain of surveillance, regardless of whether this was a breach of privacy.
It would also prohibit the reproduction of photos or images of a person without their consent, making photographs of crowds at football matches a violation of the proposed legislation on the face of it, the barrister said.
He said that overall, "one has to question the wisdom of creating a statutory privacy right" when case law on European human rights was developing so quickly.
Media law expert Patrick Walshe from Matheson Ormsby Prentice said that while it appeared that the Government's intention to proceed with the privacy Bill in the near future was now in question, regardless of the privacy Bill and the press industry's proposed code of conduct, "it is entirely likely that Ireland's courts will develop privacy principles themselves".
He said that given the frequency in which recent European Court of Human Rights case law asserting the right to privacy was now cited in judgments, "it is unquestionable that the views of the Court of Human Rights are gaining currency".
"Greater protection for the private lives of individuals is increasing," he said. "Why assume Ireland will be any different?"
Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists Séamus Dooley told the conference that while the vast majority of journalists acted in an ethical manner, there had been "a lowering of journalistic standards" driven by the demand for market share.
However, he welcomed the new code of conduct announced by the press industry last week, and the establishment of a new press council and press ombudsman.
"I believe these structures will go a long way towards addressing the legitimate concerns of the public at the decline in journalistic standards," he said.
The NUJ had major concerns about the Government's proposed privacy Bill, which, he said, "assigns to the judiciary editorial functions".
Daily Star editor Ger Colleran rejected claims there had been a decline in standards, and claimed that the debate on privacy was being driven by an "elite".
He said the worst breaches of privacy had been perpetrated not by the media in recent years but by the State, in areas such as health and education services, where people were forced to go public in order to obtain those basic services.