Our maternity system FoI request delivers €600k price

What could you buy with €600,000? A house, and maybe a couple of cars? That’s the price the HSE is quoting to process an Irish Examiner FoI request.

In fact, the quote of €606,700 is “a very conservative estimate” if you take into account the average “30,335 hours” it would take to search and retrieve the relevant emails.

As maths equations go, this one is straightforward. The current FoI rate for search and retrieval is €20 per hour. The number of hours is 30,335. €20 x 30,335 = €606,700.