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 will address 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.

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”.

Mr McCullough said his “main concern” is that surveillance was conducted within a court building in the course of the DSA.

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.

Last week, the British intelligence service, MI5 admitted that it unlawfully obtained the data of journalist Vincent Kearney on two occasions.

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.