An independent review has revealed there were 21 instances whereby eight journalists were unlawfully spied upon by the Police Service of Northern Ireland in an attempt to reveal their sources.
The review identified various other concerns about the police surveillance of journalists, lawyers and other groups in Northern Ireland.
These concerns relate to inconsistencies in standards of processing, record-keeping and the management of confidential or privileged information.
However, the McCullough Review also found that there is no basis for concerns that the PSNI surveillance of journalists or lawyers is "widespread or systemic".
The review made a series recommendations to Chief Constable of the PSNI Jon Boutcher, with the aim of addressing the concerns it identified alongside improving the PSNI's surveillance practices in the relevant areas.
The McCullough Review examined the use of surveillance by the PSNI against certain groups and people between 2011 and last November.
This included journalists, lawyers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as regulators, such as the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Policing Board.
Journalists, lawyers and other groups are deemed to have "special status" under surveillance legislation arising from material disclosed in ongoing Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) proceedings.
The PSNI has faced pressure following remarks that the use of its surveillance techniques breached the principles of press freedom and legal privilege.
As a result, the Chief Constable of the PSNI asked Angus McCullough KC to carry out an independent review in the public interest last year, aiming to enhancing public confidence in policing in Northern Ireland.
Mr Boutcher has published the main 200-page report drafted by the McCullough Review, including its findings and recommendations.
The Chief Constable and Mr McCullough addressed the media at a press conference in Belfast this afternoon.
Mr McCullough, a senior barrister based in London, said he was afforded unrestricted and unsupervised access to all police systems and records as well as serving PSNI officers and staff.
He said the process involved in carrying out the review included "painstaking searches of systems" - many of which have limited search capabilities.
In the report, Mr McCullough expressed "profound reservations" about the PSNI’s Professional Standards Department routinely "washing through" a lengthy list of journalist’s telephone numbers to check against the PSNI’s records.
This practice was employed with the intention of identifying unauthorised contact between PSNI officers or PSNI employees and journalists.
The review found the practice does not appear to have been "necessary, or proportionate, or indeed compatible with the rights of journalists whose personal data was being processed in this way".
It notes that this "washing through" of journalists’ contacts was formally discontinued in May 2024.
The review also states that while it makes criticisms, there are "far more numerous examples of careful and considered practice" by the PSNI in full accordance with the applicable legal framework and its safeguards.
A previous report in June 2024 from Mr Boutcher to the Northern Ireland Policing Board identified 323 surveillance applications "relating to journalist".
The McCullough Review revised this figure upwards to 378 applications.
Of which, it views 21 as being considered unlawful attempts to identify eight journalists' sources.
One of the journalists is Barry McCaffrey, who along with Trevor Birney, the report said "have brought to light a succession of breaches by the PSNI as found by the High Court and in the IPT, including unlawful directed surveillance of a suspected journalist source".
Last December, the IPT quashed the decision, made by former PSNI chief constable George Hamilton, to approve the Directed Surveillance Authorisation (DSA) in an investigation into the leaking of a confidential document that appeared in a documentary on a Troubles massacre.
The tribunal also awarded damages of £4,000 each to Mr McCaffrey and Mr Birney in its judgment.
Reacting to the McCullough Review today, Mr Birney said he and Mr McCaffrey would question the claim that the powers available to the PSNI have not been "routinely abused".
He said: "We were arrested in 2018 for making the film No Stone Unturned. The arrests were found to be unlawful by the High Court in Belfast in 2019.
"In 2024, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London found the police had acted unlawfully because they put me and Barry under direct and electronic surveillance in an attempt to identify our sources.
"Our case has all the hallmarks of routine abuse by the police, and we are not the only journalists that have been put under unlawful surveillance.
"We are concerned that there has been an attempt to normalise state surveillance in Northern Ireland," Mr Birney added.
Mr Boutcher took over as the PSNI’s Chief Constable in November 2023.
Earlier this year, he referred allegations that the PSNI spied on a journalist working on a documentary about the death of a teenage schoolboy in Northern Ireland to the McCullough Review.
The PSNI had denied the claims and also rejected a suggestion that it may have been behind a break-in to a car belonging to Donal MacIntyre at Heathrow Airport in October 2024.
At the time, Mr MacIntyre was working on a book and a crowd-funded documentary about the death of 14-year-old Noah Donohoe.
While the PSNI did conduct a review of Mr MacIntyre’s public posts on social media platform X, the McCullough Review has found there was no indication that Mr MacIntyre’s private communications between him and Noah’s mother had been accessed, nor that the PSNI had any involvement in a break-in to his car when it was parked in a long-stay carpark at Heathrow Airport.
The June 2024 report, from Mr Boutcher, also said there had been no use of directed surveillance against journalists and lawyers during the view period.
However, Mr McCullough said that this has been shown in the work of his review to be "incorrect".
The report states the review found two DSAs both relating to the same lawyer, "who was apparently reasonably suspected of involvement in serious criminal activity".
'Main concern'
Mr McCullough said his "main concern" is that surveillance was conducted within a court building in the course of the DSA.
Peter Corrigan and Darragh Mackin of Phoenix Law have identified themselves as two of the lawyers referenced in the review, which found that they were the subject of unlawful surveillance by police.
The Chief Constable of the PSNI, Mr Boucher issued a formal apology to both Mr Corrigan and Mr Mackin yesterday in advance of the report's publication.
Mr Corrigan and Mr Mackin have responded to the report's revelations in a joint statement.
They said: "For years, we have advocated for our clients without fear or favour. We take great pride in having represented people from all walks of life, from all sides of the community.
"Each of our clients are entitled to the very basic protections under the rule of law, which includes the principle of legal professional privilege.
"Today confirms that those who are tasked with administering the law, have broken the law. In doing so, they have had zero regard for our clients' rights, driven by the sole motivation of a 'win at whatever cost' approach."
The statement goes on to say: "In this jurisdiction, surveillance has continued to play an oversized role in the relationship between the state and private citizen. With great power, comes great responsibility. With great policing power in the North, comes grave irresponsibility.
"We were never naive enough to rule out the possibility that we would be seen as legitimate targets by our opponents in the other corner of the ring. We were however naive enough to believe that there would be boundaries within those battles.
"For us however, it is an uncomfortable reality that our families and their respective privacy was an expendable chip in the Orwellian dystopia. Privacy is not the price we should pay, for simply doing our job.
"Today's findings make clear that the PSNI never gave a second thought to attacking our characters or intruding upon our privacy, in an all-out effort to fight outside the ring and sabotage the respective court processes," Mr Corrigan and Mr Mackin's statement added.
McCullough Review makes 16 recommendations
The McCullough Review makes a total of 16 recommendations, including that the PSNI should be required to seek legal advice before carrying out a covert investigation related to a journalist or news media organisation and that as a "matter of urgency" all relevant PSNI officers should receive mandatory training on confidential and sensitive information.
Mr McCullough also "considers it advisable" to revisit the findings and conclusions he makes in the report once ongoing IPT proceedings have been determined.
Mr Kearney, who is now RTÉ's Northern Editor, worked for the BBC at the time as Home Affairs Correspondent.
Last year, the BBC wrote to the IPT about alleged PSNI surveillance of phone data linked to Mr Kearney's work at the time.
However, the McCullough Review does not refer to Mr Kearney due to ongoing IPT proceedings.
A group of experts and stakeholders was also previously formed to advise and provide direction to the review.
Its members include Human Rights Advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board John Wadham, the first police ombudsman for Northern Ireland Nuala O’Loan, and barrister and human rights campaigner Martha Spurrier.
The group also includes representatives from the following bodies: Amnesty International UK, the National Union of Journalists, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, the Law Society of Northern Ireland and the Committee on the Administration of Justice Northern Ireland.
Calls for a public inquiry
Amnesty International UK and the Committee on the Administration of Justice Northern Ireland have now called for a public inquiry to be established.
The human rights organisations have written to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn asking him to establish a public inquiry into covert surveillance in Northern Ireland by MI5, and the establishment of a specific Covert Commissioner for Law Enforcement for Northern Ireland.
Patrick Corrigan, Northern Ireland Director of Amnesty International UK said today's report exposes "a disturbing pattern of unlawful covert surveillance of journalists, with the PSNI showing clear disregard for press freedom and the rule of law".
He added: "The scale of the wrongdoing is alarming, from repeated attempts to identify reporters' sources to covert operations concealed from oversight bodies.
"But questions remain. How far has MI5 gone in unlawfully monitoring journalists in Northern Ireland? A free press simply cannot function under the shadow of state surveillance. That is why we are asking the Secretary of State to set up a full public inquiry. Only full disclosure can restore trust and safeguard the rights of journalists in Northern Ireland."
Meanwhile, Daniel Holder, Director of the Committee on Administration of Justice, has also given his reaction to the report.
He said: "The McCullough Review has done a thorough job, yet it should not have taken McCullough to get to the bottom of PSNI surveillance. There is a current oversight mechanism the UK Investigatory Powers Commissioners Office (IPCO) that missed this.
"This was not the mechanism that was supposed to be in place on the back of the Good Friday Agreement.
"The Patten Commission had recommended a specific 'Commissioner for Covert Law Enforcement in Northern Ireland' to ensure covert policing techniques were being used within the law. This unimplemented commitment should now be taken forward," Mr Holder added.
