The Supreme Court's decision, effectively allowing RTE to broadcast confidential information relating to alleged tax evasion schemes involving National Irish Bank and its customers, represents a significant tilt by the courts in favour of press freedom. The ruling will be warmly welcomed by journalists who are - because of this State's archaic libel laws - unaccustomed to the concept of courts being in the vanguard of press freedom.
Perhaps we should not be unduly surprised. The Supreme Court has a proud and distinguished record of affirming individual rights and liberties. Yesterday's judgment is an encouraging signal that it also acknowledges how the public interest can be served by investigative journalism. Most significantly, the approach of the Supreme Court to the issue of journalistic rights and responsibilities appears to be similar to that of the European Court of Human Rights: like the Strasbourg court, the Supreme Court has moved to underpin responsible and scrupulous investigative journalism in the public interest.
In his majority judgment, Mr Justice Lynch acknowledged that there is a right of confidentiality between banker and customer. But, critically, he also spoke of a balancing of interests; there is also a public interest in defeating wrongdoing, he said. Where the publication of confidential information might be of assistance in defeating wrongdoing, then the public interest in such publication might outweigh the public interest in the maintenance of confidentiality. The information in the possession of RTE alleging serious tax evasion was of genuine interest and importance to the general public and especially to the vast majority who are law-abiding tax payers.
The Supreme Court ruling should concentrate the mind of policymakers. They have obdurately refused to amend the State's penal libel laws and seem content with a situation in which journalists operate within one of the most restrictive legal environments in the developed world.
The irony is that this State will next month implement a Freedom of Information Act which affirms the public's right to know and gives the citizen access to official information. The Act is not, as has been commonly represented, a charter for press freedom; but the spirit of the new legislation is still grotesquely out of kilter with the libel laws, which date back to 1961.
In almost 40 years there has been no move to amend the Defamation Act. Successive governments have been content to leave the defamation laws in the dark ages. There has been no reform of the libel laws, notwithstanding intermittent commitments to do so, calls for change by the Law Reform Commission and a draft Bill prepared by the newspapers. The hope must be that yesterday's Supreme Court judgment will act as a catalyst for change; that legislators will, at last, recognise the integral role of the media in ensuring that public debate is properly informed.