O’Reilly: A shame some bodies not within FoI remit

INFORMATION commissioner Emily O’Reilly has criticised the Government for allowing some leading public bodies to remain outside Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation.

Ms O’Reilly also expressed concern that some information that had previously been available under FoI legislation had been removed from its scope through the establishment of new state bodies such as the Road Safety Authority.

She urged the Government to change procedures by which such organisations come under the legislation, so that the FoI Act would be applicable from the date of their establishment.

“Given the number of new bodies being established each year and an emerging trend whereby existing functions are removed to new bodies, I now consider it urgent that this matter be addressed,” said Ms O’Reilly.

She regretted the fact that other bodies such as the Gardaí, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal remained excluded from the FoI act.

“In my view it is particularly important for bodies which deal with issues so closely related to human rights to operate in a way that is open and accountable,” said Ms O’Reilly.

Speaking at the launch of her annual report yesterday, Ms O’Reilly also repeated calls on the Government to reverse its 2003 decision to impose charges for FoI requests which resulted in applicants having to pay a total of e240 for appeals made to her office.

Ms O’Reilly said she believed the Government had not allowed FoI legislation, which was first passed in 1998. sufficient time to settle down before it had been subject to a review.

She pointed out that a recent Organisation Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report on the public service had also supported calls for a reduction in barriers to public information by making all FoI requests free.

Overall the number of FoI requests to public bodies fell by 9% last year to 10,704, while a total of 353 decisions were appealed to the information commissioner — a decrease of 13% on the previous year.

During 2007, 57% of all requests were granted in full with a further 20% part-granted. However, full information is released in just over a third of FoI requests made to government departments.

Eight out of 10 of all requests are made by members of the public or groups, with just 8% of applications coming from journalists.

On the tenth anniversary of the enactment of FoI legislation, Ms O’Reilly expressed disappointment that there was still a serious problem within sections of the public service in relation to bad practices for managing records.

Ms O’Reilly also recommended changes to regulations governing access to records of deceased persons.

For the first time, the Commissioner also released details of public bodies which fail to deal with FoI requests within specified deadlines. They revealed the Department of Transport is the biggest offender for non-responses to requests.