Author: Ken Foxe

More than 500 incidents of anti-social behaviour or assaults on staff or passengers have been reported by Irish Rail this year.

Another 62 incidents involving accidents where passengers were hurt, after falling onto platforms or getting hit by dislodged luggage, were also reported.

There were also 12 near misses with trains narrowly avoiding trespassers on tracks recorded by Irish Rail on a central log it keeps of incidents of concern, which has been released under FOI.

Nine assaults were recorded including a mass brawl at Drogheda station which left “quite a bit of blood”, and an attack on a state employee who got rammed by a bicycle.

The fight at Drogheda in January involved around a dozen people fighting in the station with gardaí arriving too late to arrest those involved, who had fled by train or towards the town.

You can read the records in full for yourself below:

These are two recent FOIs giving a detailed breakdown of expenditure on personal protective equipment during the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The first set of records was obtained by Ashley Glover and shared with Right to Know. We are making it available here in the public interest.

The second record was released to journalist Gordon Deegan, and Right to Know sought a copy of it.

If you ever do read an FOI story that interests you … you can always get in touch with the public body involved and ask for a “re-release” of the records that underpinned it.

This is usually pretty straightforward. Anyway, here are the documents.

These are the submissions from the Supreme Court case involving the late Ruth Morrissey and her husband.

In July, Chief Justice Frank Clarke extended his “deepest sympathy” to the family as the judgment was published.

Right to Know is hoping to publish submissions from other important Supreme Court cases in the coming months.

With thanks to the Courts Service for providing the records:

These are 200+ pages of records on how Covid-19 infection was dealt with at the Skellig Star direct provision centre in Cahersiveen.

The records have been provided to Right to Know by the group Solidarity with Skellig Star Hotel Residents.

They detail how one doctor described the accommodation as “totally unsuitable” for residents who were trying to self-isolate.

Dr Anne Sheahan wrote: “I am concerned that this location is totally unsuitable to accommodate these residents for the next fourteen days while they try to self-isolate – no place to exercise or get fresh air and if they need to go out they cannot practice social distancing.

“From a public health perspective, I would urge you to consider seeking alternative accommodation for residents immediately.”

The records are in two separate files below:

This is part of an ongoing project by Right to Know to publish details of expenditure by third-level institutions.

Under the Public Service Reform Plan, public bodies are supposed to publish a list of purchase orders worth in excess of €20,000 every year.

Not all do and this project is an attempt to fill in some of those gaps.

Some of these records are available in spreadsheet format. If you want a copy, get in touch.

The order of the records is Trinity, Maynooth, then Galway.

The volunteer group Bravo Charlie Tango (BCT) has obtained these records from the Department of Health.

They include records relating to all NPHET Committees, except the new Vaccine Strategy Group.

The full list includes the:

– Acute Hospital Preparedness Subgroup of NPHET

– Behavioural Change Subgroup of NPHET

– Guidance and Evidence Synthesis Subgroup of NPHET

– Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group (IEMAG) – Subgroup of NPHET

– Health Legislation Subgroup of NPHET

– Medicines and Medical Devices Criticality Assessment Subgroups of NPHET

– Pandemic Ethics Advisory Group – Subgroup of NPHET

– Vulnerable People Subgroup of NPHET

– Health Sector Workforce Subgroup of NPHET

– NPHET Subgroup Diagnostic Testing Approaches Subgroup

Bravo Charlie Tango (BCT) is a group of over 1,000 volunteer Irish motorcyclists that deliver emergency medical supplies to healthcare facilities around Ireland to assist frontline medics in fighting COVID-19.

BCT works alongside OSVX, a volunteer community for Covid-19 solutions. You can find out more about their work at the following link.

On July 6, the OPW issued a press release talking excitedly about Dublin’s green lung and how an experiment to keep the side gates of the Phoenix Park closed would continue.

In that statement, they said: “With this in mind, reducing the volume of ‘through-traffic’ is critical and maintaining safe, quiet, open spaces for pedestrians and cyclists to enjoy is a key priority for us.”

A few days later, they made an about turn and decided to reopen all of the gates, except one that is being restored.

These records bring some clarity to why that decision was made.

A text message exchange between John McMahon, a senior official at the OPW, and the Private Secretary to Minister Patrick O’Donovan spells it out.

“As directed, the gates will reopen from tomorrow morning,” wrote the official. “As advised yesterday, there will be a degree of opposition to this.”

You can read the documents for yourself below:

The Office of Public Works was told that three historic structures in the Botanic Gardens were in danger of collapse and that loose glass panels in the buildings were a safety hazard to the public and staff.

The Aquatic House – a complex of three buildings in the Dublin gardens – had “significantly deteriorated” because of weather ingress, timber decay, and rusting ironwork.

An internal report said the dismal condition of the complex was in “direct contravention” of the OPW’s legal responsibilities to safeguard the buildings.

Last month, the OPW announced a €250,000 emergency project to stabilise the Aquatic House and remove all vegetation from the three structures.

They said they hoped eventually to “faithfully restore” the buildings and reopen them to the public subject to the availability of funding.

The Air Corps helicopter that lost its door after an emergency medical airlift in May had been at the centre of the exact same type of incident eleven years ago.

A preliminary report on the incident confirmed that the AgustaWestland helicopter was the very same chopper that suffered the loss of a different door over Co Kerry in 2009 while transporting then Minister Martin Cullen to an event.

The Air Aircraft Investigation Unit also declined to be involved in the investigation “given the nature of the incident”, according to the
internal report.

It also details how the fourteen-year-old helicopter had originally been on its way to collect a patient for a transfer onward to Tallaght Hospital.

While en route, the National Ambulance Service requested they fly instead to the Phoenix Park for the patient to be moved to the Mater Hospital.

You can read the report in full:

Twenty two members of An Garda Síochána have been convicted of a crime over the past three and a half years.

The records – released under FOI for the first time by the Internal Affairs Section of the gardaí – detail a range of different convictions for officers.

The convictions cover drink driving, misuse of drugs, sexual crime, and an offence under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act.

The gardaí said details of disciplinary action taken against the convicted officers would not be released because it was “of a personal nature to the individuals involved”.

They said they needed to confidentially maintain details of its disciplinary proceedings and that this outweighed the public interest in knowing what, if any, sanction had applied to the gardaí involved.

You can see the records for yourself below: