Author: Ken Foxe

A Department of Health official strongly criticised an academic paper that had drawn attention to privacy concerns around the HSE’s Covid-19 tracking app.

In an email, a senior official said the paper was “journalistic in much of its narrative” around how the app was sharing personal information.

“It is incorrect on certain key points and and it is unclear how and whether it has been peer-reviewed,” said the message.

However, records released under FOI show the HSE were happy to work with the authors of the paper to address some of the privacy concerns that had been raised around the app.

You can see more in the response below:

This is an inventory of all the artworks owned by the National Gallery of Ireland; there are 16,334 in total.

Of those, 93.6% of them (15,290) are in storage while another 2.7% of them are out on loan (439).

The remaining 605 pieces of art (or 3.7% of the total) are on display.

This is a copy of a Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection briefing note on a controversy that flared during the summer surrounding foreign travel and pandemic welfare payments.

The Department were forced to defend airport inspections, which it claimed had yielded €10 million in savings.

It emerged at the time that flights to Romania and Moldova were a particular target for the Pandemic Unemployment Payment checks.

The briefing note covers the controversy from start to finish and what to say if asked about recipients returning to work, or compliance checks on travel abroad.

The HSE feared losing public confidence over a flaw in the Covid-19 tracking app that was draining the batteries of some mobile phones.

Internal emails reveal how 12,000 people had deleted the app within a matter of hours of the problem first being reported.

At one stage, the loss of users was down by more than 83,000, according to records released in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The development team working on a fix were told it was needed “ASAP” and that time sensitivity on solving the problem was key.

One email said: “We’re back into a work week tomorrow and people will not be able to survive without a phone; the risk is that we lose public confidence and start seeing high rates of deletion.”

Developers were also worried that fixing the issue might create new problems but were “sprinting” to push out an update for the app.

An email sent from Google to the HSE said: “This issue is our highest priority – we’ve been sprinting on a fix that we can push out as fast as possible without creating risk of inadvertently making things worse.”

A project to restore the iconic dome of the Four Courts has cost more than €4 million after unforeseen complications in the project.

The project to restore the dome began in January 2015 but is not now expected to be completed until at least early 2022, according to the Office of Public Works.

After scaffolding was put in place, the OPW inspected the capitals [the decorative top part of each column] that supported the dome structure and found they were severely decayed.

As well as damage to the edges, examinations found that the “load-bearing core” of the supports had also deteriorated significantly over the course of the decades.

This is a report looking at the root causes of a summer of anti-social behaviour in the Dublin community of Inchicore in 2018.

Racist attacks, assaults and robbery of cyclists and pedestrians along the canal, shoplifting, and vandalism were all being reported.

The report set out to identify the number of adolescents and children involved in the anti-social activity, their family circumstances, and what was being done to engage with them.

This record was kindly provided to Right to Know by Ashley Glover and is made available here in the public interest.

Many of the issues raised in the report persist in this, and other, deprived areas of Dublin.

A five-star hotel bill in Jerusalem, and an air ticket from Thailand to Dublin for a banking expert were among the costs incurred by the IBRC Commission over the past year and a half.

The inquiry, which has been operating for five years, was originally expected to cost around €4 million but the final bill is likely to be at least ten times that.

A breakdown of expenditure by the Commission details more than €2.5 million of those costs, including hotels, flights, and over €1.7 million in legal bills.

Separately, staff costs for the inquiry for the period January 2019 to June 2020 were €453,959, according to details released to Right to Know under FOI.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe was forced into a u-turn over rules on a pandemic wage subsidy scheme after being warned an orchestrated campaign was likely to “undermine” him in the run-up to the budget.

One of the country’s most senior civil servants admitted backing down on changes to the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme would be a “bad signal” but that the department would eventually be forced to “give in”.

The Department of Finance was particularly worried it would end up the subject of publicity that would “undermine him [Minister Donohoe] in the run into the Budget”.

The minister had been the subject of a campaign from TDs and business interests over the exclusion of so-called ‘proprietary directors’ from the terms of the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS).

You can read the full set of documents below:

The Irish Freedom Party was forced to pay back a €101 donation but they claim the contribution was made deliberately to force an investigation under electoral laws.

Party treasurer Michael Leahy said they had asked for the money to be given to charity and that they still don’t know exactly who made the “mischievous” donation.

The saga began in May 2019 when the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) made contact with the party saying they were investigating a payment the party had received.

“The Commission has been made aware that a donation of more than €100 has recently been made to the Irexit Freedom Party,” said an email, released under FOI.

In response, party director of finance Michael Leahy said they had received five donations that exceeded €100 but that none “constitute a prohibited donation”.

In a later email exchange, Mr Leahy said they had received one specific donation of €101.

He wrote: “I assume this donation was sent mischievously and I assume it was notified to you by the parties who sent it to us with a view to putting us in a situation where we would have a legal requirement to register as a third party.”

Child and family agency Tusla expressed serious concerns over whether it would be able to bring itself into line with recommendations from the Data Protection Commissioner following a series of serious data breaches.

The agency was levied with a €75,000 fine in May this year after personal details of three vulnerable children were disclosed to unauthorised parties, including in one case to an alleged abuser.

Internal records show how the organisation was struggling to deal with data protection issues and their chief executive Bernard Gloster warned the Tusla board they would struggle to achieve compliance.

In a note to the board, Mr Gloster wrote: “While a task force across the organisation has been established to pursue the implementation agenda, I remain concerned at capacity and ability in respect of achievement.”

You can read the documents in full here: