The High Court awarded Michelle Herrity €90,000 after finding that Associated Newspapers (Ireland) Limited deliberately and unjustifiably breached her constitutional right to privacy by publishing transcripts of her private telephone conversations obtained through unlawful interception.
In a judgment delivered on 18 July 2008, Ms Justice Dunne awarded €60,000 in ordinary and aggravated compensatory damages and €30,000 in punitive damages. The case concerned three newspaper articles published over three weeks in November 2003 about Herrity’s relationship with a Catholic priest. The judgment records that a fourth article appeared in 2004, but it was not the subject of the complaint.
The court found that Herrity’s telephone line had been interfered with and a recording device attached without her permission. The recordings had apparently been arranged by her estranged husband, and the newspaper articles were facilitated by him through transcripts and photographs. The judge found that the articles presented a one-sided account of the marriage breakdown.
The newspaper argued that the publications were protected by freedom of expression and relied on the accuracy of the material, the public interest in the conduct of a parish priest, and the husband’s own freedom of expression. The court accepted that there could be a public interest in reporting on the priest’s conduct, and that limited information about Herrity might legitimately have been published in that context. But it held that those considerations did not justify publishing telephone transcripts obtained in breach of section 98 of the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983, which prohibited interception and disclosure of intercepted messages.
The judge concluded that publication of the transcripts amounted to a deliberate, conscious and unjustified breach of Herrity’s privacy. She accepted evidence that Herrity was deeply distressed and found the newspaper had not made a genuine effort to obtain her account of the marriage breakdown. The court did not decide the separate claims for breach of confidence, breach of statutory duty or conspiracy, considering it unnecessary to do so in light of its privacy finding.
The €90,000 decree comprised the €60,000 compensatory award and €30,000 punitive award. The judgment’s findings concerned the newspaper’s publication of unlawfully obtained call transcripts; it did not determine the separate claims left undecided.