The High Court has dismissed a teacher’s claim that her privacy was breached when details of a mobile phone incident at St Patrick’s Institution appeared in the Irish Daily Star.
In a judgment delivered on 31 July 2015, Mr Justice Barr held that the information about the incident did not have the legal characteristics of confidential information. He also found that the plaintiff had not established that the Irish Prison Service deliberately leaked or authorised the leak of the information. The court dismissed the action against the defendants.
The plaintiff, a secondary school teacher, was seconded to teach at St Patrick’s Institution. On 3 September 2008, a mobile phone in her bra set off the walkthrough metal detector at the prison entrance. After the detector sounded three times, she removed the phone and handed it to a prison officer. The court accepted evidence that an officer had said she would get a handheld detector, or wand, before the plaintiff produced the phone. The plaintiff was allowed into the prison that day; her security clearance was later withdrawn following an investigation.
A newspaper article published on 9 September 2008 reported that a prison worker had been suspended after a phone was found in her bra. The plaintiff alleged that prison service personnel had leaked the story to promote the new security system and that the disclosure infringed her constitutional right to privacy. The court heard that the article did not identify her. The journalist was not required to disclose his sources.
The judge said the screening area was accessible to other people entering the prison, the incident was witnessed by another teacher, and the plaintiff knew the area was covered by CCTV. He concluded that her wish to keep the incident private did not make it confidential in law. The court also found that rumours about the incident had circulated among teaching staff before the article appeared, so the leak could not be attributed only to a prison officer.
The judge accepted evidence from prison service witnesses that they had not supplied or authorised the information and that the limited press statement confirmed only that an investigation was under way. He rejected the allegation that the story was leaked to influence the internal investigation. He found that, even if a prison officer had disclosed the information, doing so would have been outside the scope of the officer’s employment and the defendants would not be vicariously liable.
The claim concerned the alleged disclosure, not the decision to withdraw the teacher’s security access. Her counsel said the plaintiff was not seeking to have that decision quashed. The judge also refused the defendants’ application to dismiss the claim under section 26 of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004, finding that inconsistencies in the plaintiff’s evidence did not establish deliberate dishonesty. He then dismissed the action on the privacy claim.