A former senior police officer has claimed the PSNI was involved in the regular monitoring of journalists' phones.
Former PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan made the claim during a BBC Northern Ireland radio interview this morning.
He claimed officers had used a standalone laptop, separate from other PSNI systems, to do the work and that it was not subject to the same levels of oversight.
The PSNI issued a statement saying it did not recognise the account as accurate.
Mr McQuillan left the PSNI in 2003 but said he had been reliably informed that the practice of monitoring journalists had happened regularly for several years from 2011.
He claimed hundreds of phones were being monitored by a dedicated unit.
He suggested that it had started out to establish whether police officers were involved in misconduct or briefing journalists, but the practice had become more widespread.
He recommended a public inquiry to establish what had been going on.
The PSNI's Deputy Chief Constable Chris Todd took issue with the claims.
"To suggest that a standalone computer system was in operation to avoid proper scrutiny and control is simply not the case.
"Our Professional Standards Department Anti-Corruption Unit used a secure system that was not accessible to the wider police service but was subject to the same scrutiny as all other police systems," he said.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the allegations ought to be independently investigated.
Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly, a member of the oversight Policing Board said were the allegations proved to be true they would cause more damage to the service's reputation.
The issue of monitoring of journalists and lawyers has dogged the PSNI in recent months.
The story started following a legal challenge by two Belfast journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey.
They complained that their data had been secretly accessed by officers trying to establish the identity of a source who provided information for a documentary on the 1994 UVF gun attack on the Heights Bar in Loughinisland in which six men were murdered.
It later emerged that RTÉ's Northern Editor Vincent Kearney's phone data may also have been targeted during a period when he was working for the BBC as an investigative journalist.
In a report to the Northern Ireland Policing Board last week the PSNI said it had applied for permission to monitor journalists' phones on ten occasions over 13 years between 2011-2024 in an attempt to identify journalistic sources.
