Category: Uncategorised

Right to Know has been successful in another case taken against the IDA where we looked for minutes of an influential committee at the development agency.

The IDA’s organisational development committee reviews the performance of the senior management team and plans for management development and succession.

The IDA, using one of its standard scattergun tactics, originally invoked six separate sections of the FOI Act to justify its refusal.

We appealed the case and subsequently sought internal review given how little information had been released.

The Information Commissioner has now found that only a very small amount of personal information relating to the former CEO of the investment agency was actually exempt under the FOI Act.

On the Section 29 arguments put forward by the state agency, the investigator wrote: “It seems to me that the IDA has made sweeping arguments about the possibility of certain harms arising without having had appropriate regard to the specific nature of the information at issue.”

On section 30, the decision said: “Yet again, it seems to me that the IDA has made sweeping arguments about the possibility of certain harms arising without having had appropriate regard to the specific nature of the
information at issue.”

For Section 35, the investigator concluded: “The IDA has not shown that the specific information was communicated by its clients in circumstances which impose an obligation of confidence or trust on the IDA.

“I simply do not accept that the IDA’s clients have an expectation that every piece of information they provide to the IDA is provided in confidence, regardless of its sensitivity.”

That’s probably enough to get a picture of the decision.

It is of course open to the IDA to appeal the decision to the High Court.

If they did, that would be the third time in the space of a couple of years where they have used taxpayer funds to fight disclosure of information about their activities to Right to Know.

You can read the full decision below:

The Commissioner for Environmental Information has told Coillte to release records it holds on a massive peat slide that took place three years ago.

The event happened at Meenbog windfarm, Co Donegal in November 2020 when thousands of tonnes of material were dislodged, causing significant damage and pollution at a local river.

In 2021, Right to Know sought copies of records held by Coillte on the peatslide in a request made under the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations.

The state forestry agency identified fifty two documents but refused access to all of them on a variety of grounds. At internal review, they upheld that decision.

We appealed to the Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information (OCEI), who in a 42-page decision has found entirely in our favour.

It was a complex case during which the OCEI had to seek submissions from nine different third parties.

During the course of the investigation, further information held by Coillte was also identified that should have been scheduled as part of the original request.

The question of whether a peat slide could cause “emissions into the environment” was also raised with Coillte saying it couldn’t.

However, the OCEI disagreed and said in circumstances where drinking water supply was affected, discharge caused by the event clearly had a damaging impact on the environment and could be considered an “emission”.

Coillte had also claimed that multiple agencies were considering action over the peatslide.

When asked to provide evidence of that, they supplied a list of eight public bodies in the Republic and Northern Ireland, all of which had to be contacted as part of the investigation.

None of them raised any objection to release of the records.

The Loughs Agency, which had taken a prosecution over the incident, said their case was concluded and they had no issue with the documents being made public.

Coillte also made vague arguments about legal privilege; however, the decision gave little credence to that.

The forestry agency also made some tenuous arguments about the records being protected as the “internal communications” of a public authority.

The OCEI said a small fraction of the records might fall into that category but the public interest still weighed in favour of disclosure, especially given the passage of time.

It’s a very lengthy decision and we hope this gives a reasonable summary of it.

Coillte have two months in which to appeal to the High Court if they wish.

Ninety five cases of suspected passport fraud have been referred to the gardaí by the Department of Foreign Affairs over the past two and a half years.

The Passport Office also refused sixty eight different applications from individuals where they had concerns over potential fraud or believed somebody was seeking to steal somebody’s identity.

Figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs reveal as well how 1,095 passports have been stolen from Irish citizens in the period since the beginning of 2021.

There were also 1,343 instances of damaged passports and 9,333 cases where passports were reported lost or disappeared by the holder.

The number of passports going missing has risen sharply this year with 5,392 reports made between January and June of 2023 compared to just 457 for the entirety of 2021, when strict COVID-19 restrictions on travel remained in place.

There has also been a similarly steep rise in cases of passports getting stolen with 583 incidents logged in the first six months of this year compared to only 79 total for 2021.

Senior officials at the Department of Defence believed it made no sense to carry out a study on if one of their key barracks could be used for housing before a decision was made on whether they still needed to station troops there.

The Department of the Taoiseach had asked the Land Development Agency (LDA) to examine whether Cathal Brugha Barracks in Dublin could be repurposed to provide much-needed residential accommodation.

However, the Department of Defence believed it was “premature” without a full feasibility study on whether the Defence Forces could even manage without the property, which is located on a highly valuable site in Rathmines.

An internal defence submission said: “The ‘housing focused study’ should not commence until the [department] feasibility study is nearing completion or significantly progressed and there is a considered view as to whether a move [or] reconfiguration is regarded as feasible or not from a security, operational, and cost perspective.

“It appears to be premature to spend money on an evaluation of the potential for the site to be repurposed for residential housing, if there is evidence that a move [or] reconfiguration is not actually feasible.”

However, Tánaiste and Defence Minister Micheál Martin asked that the Land Development Agency study go ahead saying it was important government agencies “work collectively, [and] not in silos”.

The Office of Public Works has spent more than €3.6 million on security at the homes of politicians and other officeholders over the past six years amid an upsurge in intimidating protests and far right activity in Ireland.

Spending this year is on track to exceed €1 million with over €590,000 already spent on the provision of extra security at private residences during the first six months of the year.

The average expenditure on each project has also risen substantially with each of the installations this year costing an average of €118,000, according to figures from the OPW.

The OPW said they were not involved in deciding who got security at their home and that they acted on the instructions of the Department of Justice based on a threat assessment by gardaí.

The Information Commissioner (OIC) has found in favour of Right to Know in a case taken over access to records about the accidental release of an unredacted report on a protected disclosure.

A protected disclosure was made in March 2021 about an event held in McKee Barracks in Dublin, which alleged a breach of COVID-19 regulations, and the physical and sexual assault of two female Defence Forces personnel.

As a result, senior counsel Hugh Mohan was asked to carry out an investigation, the findings of which subsequently became known as the Mohan report.

When it was finalised in March of this year, the Department of Defence published a version of the report that contained details which were supposed to be redacted.

Right to Know sought a copy of records relating to this but both after initial request and internal review, the Department of Defence refused release saying the records related to a protected disclosure.

The case then took on an added significance because if the Department’s position had been correct, any record, no matter how distantly linked to the original protected disclosure, would automatically be exempt from release under FOI.

Taken to its conclusion, this could have meant people could not even inquire about how many protected disclosures were made to a public body.

The department’s position was described as: “In further submissions, the Department said that the records in question only exist because a protected disclosure was made.

“It said that the records sought relate to a report made under the Protected Disclosures Act though it also acknowledged that ‘it is apparent that they are somewhat distant from the actual disclosure made’. It said that section 42(ja) does not provide for any ‘degree of proximity’ between the relevant records and the report.”

The Department also claimed having to deal with any records relating to a protected disclosure under FOI could put them at “considerable risk” if a mistake was made.

The Information Commissioner did not agree sand said FOI often carried such risks for decision makers about what to make public or not.

The investigator wrote: “I am not satisfied that there is a sufficiently substantial link between the original protected disclosure and administrative records relating to the publication of an incorrectly redacted version of a subsequent report.

“I am not satisfied that the content of the specific records sought is such that they could be said to relate to a protected disclosure.”

You can read a full copy of the decision below:

A report on the headquarters of the Courts Service found damp, broken tiles, patches of black mould, as well as fire exits that were regularly blocked because of files being stored in corridors.

The report also explained how staff often ate lunch at their desks because there were no spaces to “sit and socialise” with colleagues while some of the most attractive parts of the office were crammed with papers and documents.

A survey of employees was told that the Dublin HQ was “very poorly laid out” with a high density of desks and “excessive storage”.

The report said there was an “unwelcoming reception” area which was dark and dated and created an “uninspiring experience” for staff and visitors to the building.

It said there was no building fire strategy in place with “storage and clutter … kept in corridors, often blocking fire exits”.

Technology was not up to date either making it difficult to carry out “hybrid” meetings between staff who were in the office and those working from home or elsewhere.

These are a series of briefings prepared for Minister Catherine Martin on what to say when questioned about the ongoing expenditure controversy at RTÉ.

In them, Minister Martin was given question and answer style briefs for questions she was likely to face in the media and elsewhere.

These included responses on what to say if asked whether the RTÉ board should all be removed, if Kevin Bakhurst was the right person to lead change at the public service broadcaster, and why she didn’t act earlier when she was first alerted to governance issues at Montrose.

The operators of light rail networks in other countries strongly advised Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) against any attempt to prolong the life of forty Luas trams that have been in service for more than two decades.

TII were told that so-called “life extension” programmes for the vehicles sometimes ended up costing over double what was anticipated.

A review examining the future of the forty original trams from the Luas network said they already had a “very low level of reliability” and that significant investment would be required to bring them back to perfect condition.

It said the ‘design life’ of the trams was thought to have been 30 years but that in other cities where similar vehicles were in use, they had given around 25 years of useful service.

The report said that while ‘life-extending’ the trams might initially appear a good option with potential savings of €20 million, problems of reliability were likely to continue even after they were modernised.

It said “soundings” had been taken from other countries that operate light rail networks with all but two advising against any life-extension programme “if at all possible”.

Transport operators in Boston and Melbourne said they had modernised some of their fleet, but only because they had left it too late to order replacement trams and they effectively had no alternative.

The report said: “They advised that in all cases of life-extension programmes, the final outturn costs compared to the original budgets inclusive of contingencies and risk allocations were always significantly higher, in some cases ‘more than double’.”

Ambulances were involved in crashes or prangs more than 400 times over the past four years.

The National Ambulance Service said there were also nineteen occasions last year where one of their vehicles broke down due to a puncture, mechanical failure, or warning lights which needed immediate investigation.

In the first half of this year, ambulances were in 69 collisions while the full-year figure for 2022 was 114, according to figures provided under FOI.

There were a further 117 crashes or mishaps involving emergency vehicles in 2021 and a total of 113 in the year prior to that.

The National Ambulance Service said that the number of incidents of vehicle damage was very low and that many were minor incidents.

They added: “Approximately 40 per cent of all vehicle damage arises from reversing incidents, i.e. narrow gates or overhanging obstacles during poor visibility in emergency situations.”