JOURNALIST Vincent Browne has explained the reasons why he entered into a "secret deal" with the Government for compensation over the tapping of his telephone during a 10-year period.
Speaking on RTE's Prime Time last night, Mr Browne said he was advised by his lawyers that his case "appeared to be substantially different" from that involving two other journalists, Geraldine Kennedy and Bruce Arnold, who also had their phones tapped by the Government, in that the Government acknowledged that the tapping of Ms Kennedy's and Mr Arnold's phones had been done "without justification".
Mr Browne said that the Government felt it was acting "with justification" in tapping his phone in that his job as a journalist involved him talking to members of the IRA for research purposes.
He added that if he had decided to take a court action against the Government he would have had to "provide money up front" to cover his legal costs. These were among the reasons why he had decided to settle his case out of court.
He said that most of his phone conversations with the IRA had taken place before the Government tap on his phone started. Of the 85 transcripts he had seen, 60 related to a four-month period in 1980 in which he was working on an article about the 1970 "arms crisis" for the now defunct Ma gill magazine, of which he was editor at the time.
The transcripts showed that he had had conversations with the manager of Ma gill, with the journalist Geraldine Kennedy, with his solicitor and barrister about potential legal difficulties in the writing of the story on the "arms crisis", with the then Taoiseach, Mr Charles J. Haughey, and with a former Garda Commissioner and a former Attorney General. He said these phone calls were of an "entirely political nature" and had nothing to do with matters affecting the security of the State or subversive organisations.
Mr Browne said he did not contest the requirement of secrecy asked for by the Government in relation to the out-of-court settlement, in which he was awarded £90,000.