Author: Ken Foxe

The Information Commissioner was told government departments and public bodies were failing to resource Freedom of Information (FOI) properly and that public servants were not being given enough training to make good quality decisions.

A briefing for the recently appointed Information Commissioner Ger Deering said that public bodies had consistently failed to allocate enough resources to adequately fund FOI.

It also highlighted the failure of public bodies to make sure those tasked with making decisions had enough access to training, support, and expertise.

The analysis stands in stark contrast to comments made by Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath who has repeatedly claimed FOI is “robust and functioning well”.

The briefing – which was prepared late last year by officials – paints a somewhat bleak picture of information access in Ireland saying the Information Commissioner needed to do more to ensure public bodies dedicated adequate resources to FOI.

It said: “[We have] had very few interactions in recent years with heads of [public] bodies who might need some encouragement to make such commitments and it is an area in which we should do more.”

The briefing said FOI decision making was almost always “tagged on as an additional function” to civil servants who had other jobs.

And it said that FOI officers tended to be replaced quite regularly, thus “continuing the cycle of inexperienced decision makers making decisions”.

The Information Commissioner had themselves recruited somebody to develop an outreach programme to help public bodies whose decision making they considered “deficient”. However, this person had left their post with significant delays in filling the vacancy.

“As such, we have undertaken very little outreach work since May 2021,” said the briefing, “which we are keen to restart.”

The Information Commissioner (OIC) said they had their own difficulties in keeping staff with many of their senior staff taking advantage of a “mobility scheme” to move elsewhere in the public service.

The briefing explained: “OIC is experiencing higher staff turnover and are facing lengthy delays in having vacancies filled. The problems are more acute for the OIC, given the specific skills set we believe to be necessary for high calibre case workers.

“OIC has lost significant expertise in recent years, and it has a relatively inexperienced team overall. This is not helpful in circumstances where demand for our services has been increasing.”

The new Information Commissioner was also told of the “significant resource implications” of FOI decisions being appealed to court in terms of time and costs.

They said this influenced their approach to “engagement with parties to a review” and the level of detail they provided in their decisions.

The briefing concluded: “It remains an ongoing concern.”

A separate briefing for Ger Deering on FOI’s sister system for requesting records, the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations, detailed how cases in that area had doubled in the space of three years.

It said that the current environmental and housing crises meant this would continue and explained how negative findings had been made against Ireland on how it dealt with such requests by the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee.

A slideshow presentation said that in one year 19% of cases they received were ending up in the High Court, but that this had brought “clarity to the law” and a subsequent fall-off in court appeals.

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner said that since the briefing was drafted in November last year, they had been able to recruit three additional staff.

He said: “In addition, existing staff have continued to further develop the skills and knowledge required to carry out their roles.”

The spokesman said that the newly appointed commissioner Ger Deering planned to engage with public bodies and raise all the issues highlighted in the briefing, including the lack of resources and training for information access.

Forty three prisoners, including criminals serving time for kidnapping, robbery, threats to murder, and homicide offences have escaped or absconded from jail over the past four years.

However, of all those who made a run for it, forty-one have been returned to custody and only two of them remain unaccounted for.

The Irish Prison Service said that between 2018 and 2021, eight prisoners had escaped from closed prisons, or while they were on a prison escort, appearing in court, or during a hospital or medical appointment.

All eight of them have been recaptured however and were returned to prison to serve the rest of their sentence.

Another 35 prisoners absconded from the country’s two low-security ‘open’ prisons, Loughan House in Co Cavan and Shelton Abbey in Co Wicklow.

Government ministers have claimed almost €260,000 in a special allowance that lets them buy or rent a second home in Dublin.

The Revenue Commissioners said that between ten and fourteen ministers had been in receipt of the so-called ‘dual abode allowance’ in each of the past four years.

The more than forty claims made since 2018 resulted in tax write-offs of over €103,000 for the politicians, each of whom already earn between €141,000 and €183,000 every year, or over €200,000 in the case of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste.

Revenue said that fewer than ten senior politicians had availed of the dual abode allowance last year, claiming €30,050 and resulting in tax savings of €12,020.

However, those figures are likely to rise as a four-year time limit is in place for the special tax break.

Officials at the Department of Finance warned that forcing the state’s three banks to pay €150 million in the bank levy this year could lead to “further cost cutting”, higher costs for consumers, and would be “particularly onerous” for the smallest of them Permanent TSB.

In submissions for Minister Paschal Donohoe, officials said that maintaining annual income from the levy as KBC and Ulster Bank departed the Irish market would leave AIB, Bank of Ireland, and Permanent TSB to foot the full annual bill.

They said forcing the three banks to bear a “higher share” of the levy would ultimately hit consumers in the form of higher charges and lending rates.

In detailed arguments on the future of bank levy, they said it remained a factor that any new bank looking to enter the Irish market would consider if planning to do business here.

It also said that the levy – no matter what – would “never provide for the recovery of the costs of the financial crisis”.

NAMA has paid out €3.2 million in redundancy and garden leave payments over the space of just over a year and a half, new figures have shown.

Figures from the National Asset Management Agency reveal that 49 former staff received redundancy pay in the period between June 2020 and the end of last year.

One person received a redundancy payout exceeding €100,000 while another was paid between €90,000 and €100,000 as the agency continues to wind down its operations.

A total of €2.2 million was paid out in redundancy with two people receiving between €80,000 and €90,000 and four getting between €70,000 and €80,000.

The chief executive of the Higher Education Authority said there was a “disturbing picture” of the internal workings and governance at the University of Limerick (UL).

In a forthright letter to the most senior official at the Department of Further and Higher Education, the HEA said “very serious and broad issues” had come to light about the university.

The HEA CEO Dr Alan Wall said that based on legal advice they could not carry out their own investigation but said a full governance review of UL should take place.

The concerns were raised following the controversial €8 million acquisition of the former Dunnes Stores in Limerick in 2019, despite being valued at €3 million by Limerick’s local authority just two years earlier.

The HEA had originally withheld these records and they were only released following an internal review by Right to Know.

Responding to them, a spokeswoman for UL said: “University of Limerick is continuing to engage with the Higher Education Authority, providing assurances that are being sought on governance.

“The HEA is satisfied with the assurances it has received on governance and processes at UL. University of Limerick is committed to strong governance and a continued review and enhancement of its policies, procedures, and practices.”

The Department of the Taoiseach is sitting on €30,000 worth of gifts that were presented to the Taoiseach or Ceann Comhairle but were considered too valuable for them to keep.

An official log of high-value items reveals how various Taoisigh and the current Speaker of the Dáil have received eleven gifts that had to be surrendered under ethics rules.

The items include a painting by dancer Michael Flatley, a €7,700 Rolex watch, a Samuel Beckett first edition, and a bust of JFK.

Under ethics rules around receiving gifts, individuals in high public office are not allowed to accept a present that is worth more than €650 due to the risk of corruption.

One of the single-biggest issues affecting Freedom of Information in Ireland is the frequent redaction of the names of officials from records.

Right to Know has highlighted this repeatedly over the past year as every other week we receive records where names have been removed, often making the records hard to follow or borderline incomprehensible.

We have raised this issue with the Department of Public Expenditure and the Information Commissioner but it appears that confusion persists.

Twice in recent months, the Department of Health released records to us with the names of staff members redacted.

However, internal emails detail how the advice given by the department’s FOI office should have left little doubt about how to handle this type of information.

One email said: “Regardless of grade, any and all civil servants named in their official capacity, should not be redacted from documents released under FOI. So, our names, our grades, our units, our office addresses, are all releasable. None of those details is private.”

It added: “Personal information relates only to actual personal matters, (such as names on a HR document that was sensitive in nature – e.g. sick leave issue). But if documents are just naming us because that’s where we work or we wrote the letter or email in question, then we have no right to redaction.”

If you’re involved in making FOI decisions in any public body, these records are worth a few minutes of your time.

Rollout of a Covid-19 antigen test pilot scheme took almost four months amid concerns over liability if something went wrong and the cost of a wider testing programme.

The Department of Children raised multiple issues over plans for rapid testing in childcare and educational settings wondering if the initial pilot test was of too small a scale to even be useful.

In a briefing for Minister Roderic O’Gorman, officials also queried how affordable a major testing scheme would be with around 30,000 people in childcare to be tested twice every week.

It said: “If the approach were to be rolled out nationally, the potential cost of the test kits alone is up to €240,000 per week.”

Testing ended up taking place across fourteen sites in higher education and early learning and childcare from late July to mid-September in 2021.

A copy of the report explained how 225 participants were asked to take two tests per week at home for four weeks, prior to attending work or college.

Over eight weeks of testing, 1,595 antigen tests were completed with two positive results, both of which were later confirmed through PCR testing.

According to the report, participants felt the regular antigen testing gave “peace of mind and feelings of safety and confidence”.

Most people who were signed up said they would be happy to continue with free antigen testing if it was available to them.

Others were reluctant to engage however, with some being nervous and uncomfortable about testing and others simply not wishing to get involved.

The report also cautioned that large scale rollout of antigen testing would require “significant planning and resources”.

Other pitfalls included the possibility of “dishonesty” when people were self-reporting results as well as the large amount of waste being created.

A copy of the Department of Children submission is below (including a number of other unrelated submissions on domestic violence and the children of Catholic priests):

And a copy of the report from the pilot study:

Irish Rail recorded more than 2,500 incidents of anti-social activity, lewd behaviour, hate crime, and violations of Covid-19 restrictions last year.

A log of incidents provided by the railway operator detail a catalogue of cases, with 549 of the incidents categorised as “reportable” criminal and anti-social behaviour.

An analysis of data showed 66 cases of assault last year on rail services or in stations, with 11 assaults on contractors, 37 on customers, 10 on Irish Rail employees, and 8 on other members of the public.

Five instances of hate crime were also recorded, two of them on DART services, one in Limerick, one on a mainline service, and one other with an unspecified location according to the figures.

There were 105 instances of individuals flouting Covid-19 restrictions around the wearing of face masks or other public health measures.

A copy of the database is available.

You can also see the records in PDF below.