The DAA has been told it must reconsider its refusal to release a database of environmental expenditure to Right to Know.
Under the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations, we had sought a record of purchase orders of greater than €20,000 for a single three month period last year.
The DAA initially accepted that some of the information was environmental but argued that the request was manifestly unreasonable.
They said there were 350 transactions involved, each of which would have to be examined to see if it was environmental and whether it were exempt from release.
The DAA said each of these individual checks would take thirty minutes but provided no further detail on how that figure was calculated.
Overall, they said it would take 212 hours – or 26.5 working days – to check just 350 entries.
They also said some of the information was commercially sensitive and that release of other transaction data could adversely affect public security by identifying contractors, particularly around cybersecurity.
The DAA later questioned whether the information was environmental at all, even though the Commissioner for Environmental Information had found it was in a similar Right to Know case.
The airport authority has now been told it must carry out a new internal review, providing more detail on why certain transactions are exempt from release, and a more thorough estimate of how long it would actually take to check the data.
Separately, Right to Know has lost a related case for information from Bord na Móna, which you can read here.
However, that was for a much longer period of time covering 2019 to 2022, which the CEI eventually decided was manifestly unreasonable.
The DAA request is much more targeted and covers just Quarter 3 of 2024.
As a footnote, such lists of purchase orders of greater than €20,000 are published as a matter of routine by all public bodies in the state.