Investigative reporter Dónal MacIntyre has asked the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to investigate claims that Northern Ireland police put him under surveillance and monitored his social media posts.
MacIntyre discovered that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) started watching him when he began looking into the mysterious death of Noah Donohoe, a biracial Catholic teenager whose body was found in a storm drain in Belfast in 2020. Public concern has mounted over how police handled the case, and MacIntyre, known for his work on BBC’s MacIntyre Undercover and CBS’s Donal MacIntyre: Unsolved, took the lead in this investigation starting in 2023.
His suspicions were heightened after a break-in at his car upon returning from Ireland in October 2024. During the break-in, sensitive files from his car were disturbed, but items like cash and electronics were left untouched.
Two months later, a Belfast Telegraph reporter reached out to MacIntyre, revealing he had been told by a reliable source that the police had been surveilling him since he started investigating Donohoe’s disappearance. The police operation had an unknown codename, and the source claimed police accessed messages between MacIntyre and Donohoe’s mother.
Initially, the PSNI remained tight-lipped about the allegations, only acknowledging them five days later. Chief constable Jon Boutcher confirmed in a Northern Ireland Policing Board meeting that in August 2023, the PSNI reviewed information from two Twitter accounts. He stated these communications were publicly accessible but admitted that the person posting wouldn’t know the police had viewed their posts. He insisted no confidential journalistic material had been observed or recorded.
MacIntyre pointed out that the break-in targeted his submission to the coroner regarding Donohoe’s death, which questioned the reliability of PSNI’s crime incident recording systems. When he reported the break-in to airport police, he found out there was no CCTV in the car park.
The controversy surrounding Donohoe’s death and police handling has sparked significant public interest. If MacIntyre’s findings expose failures in PSNI’s actions, it could lead to serious fallout for the police force.
MacIntyre stated that if the investigation proves he was under authorized direct surveillance, Boutcher should resign. The criteria for such surveillance are strict, only permissible in extreme situations like protecting a life or addressing serious crimes.
Last year, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that the PSNI unlawfully surveilled journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey in connection with their inquiry into police collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. Additionally, data revealed that between 2011 and 2024, police made 823 requests for communications data about journalists involved in criminal cases, aiming to uncover sources in ten specific instances.
MacIntyre has also submitted evidence to the McCullough Review, established to investigate PSNI spying on journalists and lawyers. Concerns have risen about a secret annex to the review that may keep some findings hidden from the public. McCaffrey, a victim of police surveillance, expressed his worries about the potential secrecy, viewing it as a tactic to shield unlawful actions. He emphasized that a review lacking full public access wouldn’t suffice and called for an independent, judge-led public inquiry with full powers to compel evidence.