The High Court has directed An Garda Síochána to make a redacted report available for inspection in a defamation case brought by Lynda Meegan against Times Newspapers Limited, trading as The Sunday Times.
In a judgment delivered on 2 July 2021, Mr Justice Meenan ruled that redactions could balance the newspaper’s interest in defending the proceedings with the public interest in effective crime investigation and protecting informants. He directed that information that could potentially identify informants be removed.
Meegan claims damages over an article published by The Sunday Times on 14 September 2014, headlined “Convicted bomb-maker was recipient of garda intelligence.” The article referred to an unnamed former female Garda officer. Meegan’s Statement of Claim pleads that she is the former officer referred to. Those are claims in the proceedings; this judgment does not determine whether the article was defamatory or whether the pleaded identification is correct.
The discovery application concerned a report prepared for the Minister for Justice, dated 1 October 2014, about the provision of confidential information by a serving Garda member to dissident republicans. In March 2019, the High Court ordered discovery of the report on consent. The Garda Commissioner later objected to producing it, claiming public interest privilege to protect Garda investigative capabilities, tradecraft and informants.
The report was provided to the court for review and possible redaction. Mr Justice Meenan said public interest privilege required balancing the state’s reasons for withholding material against the public interest in disclosure of relevant documents. He rejected the Commissioner’s argument that the report was not relevant or necessary to the newspaper’s defence, noting that the Commissioner had consented to discovery on that basis.
The court ordered that the redacted report be made available for inspection and returned it to the Commissioner for transmission to the defendant. The judgment did not decide the defamation claim. The parties were given 14 days to make short submissions on costs; the judgment records no costs decision.