A freelance journalist who works for The Irish Times was ordered to be taken into custody by a Dublin judge yesterday after his mobile phone rang in the courtroom.
Mr John Kilraine (36) was reporting District Court No.46 under Judge Terence Finn when his phone started ringing. He tried to leave through a side door but found it locked.
After he had turned the phone off, he said he heard the judge say: "The man with the telephone - put him in custody."
He was taken to a cell in the adjoining Bridewell Garda station and was held there for just over two hours. He was allowed one call, and phoned The Irish Times to ask for a solicitor. Before the end of the morning's proceedings, he emerged from under the court and apologised to the judge. "I didn't realise the phone was on and tried to turn it off as quickly as possible," he said. Judge Finn accepted the apology and warned him to make sure his phone was switched off in future. He was then set free.
Mr Kilraine said afterwards he had heard mobile phones belonging to lawyers and gardai ringing in court before but, in his experience, he was the first person to be put into custody or admonished by a judge.
He said his main worry while he sat in the cell was that he would miss his afternoon flight to London, where he was going to visit relations. Mr Eoin Ronayne, Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said the taking into custody of Mr Kilraine was "outrageous".
"A mobile phone is as common a tool of journalists as a notebook and pen," he said, adding that this latest incident had to be put alongside the problems photographers faced when trying to cover the courts. "It indicates that the judiciary does not seem to understand the realities of the modern media."
He said the union would raise all these issues with the commission, chaired by Mrs Justice Denham, which is studying ways of making the courts more accessible to the public and the media.