Justice minister in row with ICCL over GSOC powers review

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has rejected calls for the review of data retention legislation, through which the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) retrieved journalists’ phone records, to also consider members of the public.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) was among organisations calling for Ms Fitzgerald to extend the terms of reference for the review beyond the law’s use in relation to journalists.

Mark Kelly, executive director of the ICCL, said: “This legislation is used by law enforcement agencies to capture a wide range of private information about members of the public. The oversight shortcomings that this review will certainly identify are far from confined to cases where the data belongs to members of the media.”

However, Ms Fitzgerald said a broader review would be “a much longer exercise and would have delayed resolving the specific issue about journalistic records that has given rise to concern”.

She is expecting the review, chaired by former chief justice John Murray, to be completed within three months.

The “review of law and practice” was announced following controversial reports that GSOC had accessed two journalists’ mobile phone records during an inquiry into internal media leaks.

Mr Kelly said Ms Fitzgerald’s reasoning was “implausible”.

He explained: “The former judge has been asked to review the ‘legislative framework’ of the 2011 Data Retention Act and that Act makes no distinction whatsoever between accessing and retaining the communications data of journalists and that of other people.

“In other words, the former judge has been asked only to review the adequacy of the law, not to scrutinise the many thousands of times it is used annually to compromise the privacy of journalists and the public at large.

“Consequently, artificially restricting his terms of reference to the law’s use to snoop on journalists will not reduce the time needed for his review, but will diminish the value of his findings.”