Judge warns about 'potential deficiency' in law in case involving journalist's mobile

The editor of the Strokestown Democrat, along with the owners of the paper, had brought legal proceedings challenging the seizure of his mobile phone by gardaí who were investigating an incident at a farmhouse at Falsk, near Strokestown in 2018. File photo: Pexels

A judge has ordered Gardaí to pay the legal costs of a reporter whose mobile phone was taken and which subsequently sparked a High Court application seeking to stop gardaí from accessing messages on it.

The new judgement also specified that while gardaí had been granted permission to download material from the phone - as per an earlier ruling last September - the extent of the information which they can access, pending any appeal, should be limited and that the case highlighted a potential deficiency in Irish law when it came to the protection of journalistic sources.