An award-winning journalist behind the Boston College IRA archive has challenged an Irish tabloid to give assurances that its reporters did not obtain illegal intercepted private communications between an American citizen and the US embassy in Dublin.

Carrie Twomey, the partner of Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA prisoner and ex-chief researcher on the Boston College project, has claimed her phone calls and emails to US diplomatic staff in Dublin and Belfast were illegally intercepted. Twomey has reported her concerns to the Irish police force, the Garda Síochána.

A fortnight ago the Sunday World newspaper reported that Twomey had written to the…