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A drone crashing into a heritage site, a mysterious series of incidents where locks were stolen and replaced at an historic gate and passage tomb, and rogue metal detectorists were among the incidents of vandalism at national monuments over the past year.

The Office of Public Works said there had been more than three dozen incidents reported since September 2022 with multiple graffiti incidents and blocked up windows getting kicked in.

In April, at the Hill of Slane in Co Meath, a drone crashed into the wall of the college building there, which was reported to the OPW by a member of the public though fortunately no serious damage was caused.

There were also a series of bizarre incidents where locks were cut off national monuments and replaced with other locks to which nobody had the key.

This happened at St Laurence’s Gate in Drogheda, Co Louth twice and also at the passage tomb complex in nearby Dowth, Co Meath between February and April.

There were two cases of metal detectorists who had dug up the ground at heritage sites at Kilcrea Friary and Conna Castle, both of them in Co Cork, with OPW staff able to reinstate the disturbed soil.

Two separate incidents were reported at Holycross Abbey in Co Tipperary where a lock and a bolt on a wooden door were removed and thrown away.

Then, a fire with paper was lit on top of “rubble stone” which left the rock blackened although workers were able to clean it back up at a minimal cost.

Three cases of etchings on ancient cairns and megalithic tombs at Carrowkeel, Carrowmore, and Knockarea in Co Sligo were also discovered with all of the incidents reported to gardaí for further investigation.

The records were released in response to a request under the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations.

Finance Minister Michael McGrath was advised by officials and the Central Bank not to announce any mortgage interest relief measures in this year’s budget.

He was told there was no “evidence base” to support any general measure, that it could worsen housing supply issues, would give rise to deadweight, and have the potential to be extremely costly.

Department of Finance officials said even a targeted relief should be avoided on “the grounds of fairness” and that if it were to be introduced, it could be very complex to implement and operate.

In response to an early pre-budget submission, Mr McGrath said he noted their advice and said it was “undoubtedly a complex issue”.

However, he said that some people were “really struggling and we have a duty to see if we can provide some help” asking if a targeted option for those most affected by interest rate hikes could be examined.

In the budget, a €125 million mortgage relief package was eventually introduced that will save around 150,000 home owners up to €1,250 per year in cases where their repayments had risen sharply.

The Revenue Commissioners have been told to release records they hold on discussions over whether they would be tasked with collecting the TV licence.

Revenue had claimed the records were exempt from release on the basis of Cabinet confidentiality (Section 28 of the FOI Act) and under Section 30.

However, the Information Commissioner has found that only two records actually contained information for use at a government meeting.

It’s an important decision which again goes to the heart of what is and is not exempt under Section 28 of the Act.

It only covers records that were created very specifically for a meeting of government.

However, many public bodies wrongly interpret it much more widely as any records relating in any way to a decision or a meeting of government.

This is not correct and this decision of the Information Commissioner upholds that principle.

Separately, Revenue had tried to rely on Section 30 of the FOI Act saying some of the records could reveal anticipated difficulties in collecting tax.

They said this could lead to widespread evasion and undermine public confidence in their abilities to effectively collect all taxes.

The Information Commissioner (OCEI) was not convinced however, and said Revenue had failed to provide enough detail on how potential for evasion could prejudice its investigations, inquiries, or audits.

The OCEI also said that steps would presumably be taken to ensure any tax collection system would be robust.

You can read the full decision below.

The Department of Foreign Affairs pleaded for an extra €5 million in funding for the Passport Service saying it was the only way they could provide at least the same levels of service last year.

In a pre-budget submission, the department said they were expecting to issue another 1 million passports this year, not far off last year’s record level of 1.085 million.

They also said they expected to deal with a higher level of sometimes complex foreign birth registration applications with figures rising significantly over recent years.

The submission said: “[We have] over 21,000 applications received so far this year, an increase of almost 22% on the same period last year.”

They said the Passport Service was grappling with “ageing systems” and “increased postage costs” which meant a significant boost in funding would be required just to maintain services at the existing level.

The department also said they were looking for €15 million as part of a plan for a new ‘Ireland House’ that will be based in New York.

It will bring together diplomatic personnel along with overseas staff from agencies like the IDA and Enterprise Ireland under one roof.

The pre-budget submission said: “This development needs to be completed by end 2024, as the lease on the current property expires at that time.”

The department also looked for a €2.5 million funding boost to help open up three new missions next year.

These will be based in Munich in Germany, Milan in Italy, and in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, and are part of the ‘Global Ireland’ programme to extend the country’s diplomatic reach.

In their ask for overseas development funding, the department said they were seeking an extra €130 million because of the “unprecedented scale” of the challenges being faced by the world.

These included the climate crisis, “the biggest land war in Europe since World War II” in Ukraine, and an increasing number of humanitarian disasters. The submission predated the conflict in Gaza and Israel.

It said: “At the same time, the rules-based international system – a system that Ireland depends on for our continued prosperity and safety – is under profound pressure.

“The requested increase would be used to meet increasing demands for climate finance, to support Ukraine and the interconnected global food crisis, as well as to meet growing humanitarian demands.”

The Department of Finance complained bitterly over a new €115 million system meant to streamline public accounts blaming it for incorrect calculations, slowing down civil servants, staff stress, and simple tasks taking an “inordinate amount of time”.

In correspondence, the department’s secretary general said they had even been hit with penalty interest because of delays in setting up basic data using the new Financial Management Shared Services (FMSS) system.

The Department of Finance was one of a number of stage agencies that were chosen for the initial roll-out of what was supposed to be a new ‘simpler’ system early last year.

However, they soon ran into problems with financial reports that used to be delivered in moments now taking extended periods of time to generate.

An internal paper said: “The impact of the reporting issues means that finance officers cannot quickly do the same searches that they could previously.

“Reports that took literally one second on [the old system] take anywhere from two to three minutes to over ten minutes to run and sometimes the same report has to be rerun if the user does not locate the information required.”

The position paper added that reports which were generated were “very cluttered and difficult to read”.

The department – along with the Department of Public Expenditure – said the new system had caused a “material impact on the labour productivity of staff”.

“Staff across the departments and their offices of government are of the view that the system design is unnecessarily complicated and not intuitive especially if you are processing a new item for payment,” said the document.

TDs and Senators have been paid travel and accommodation expenses for more than 1,600 days’ worth of sick leave over the past two years.

Under a strange quirk in the expenses system that applies in Leinster House, politicians can be declared present in the Dáil or Seanad even when they are not there.

The system allows TDs and Senators to “reconcile” their attendance based on a sick note from a medical practitioner.

Each day of attendance at Leinster House can yield a daily payment between €75 for TDs who live in Dublin up to €283-a-day for those who live more than 360 kilometres from parliament.

There are thirteen different “bands” in the system with payments rising according to how far the person’s home is from the capital and slightly lower rates applying for Senators and officeholders compared to TDs.

The maximum payment is only available for those who clock in for at least 120 days in every year. A deduction of 1% is made for each day below that target.

According to records released under FOI, 780 days of ill-health were reconciled last year, made up of 491 days for Senators and 289 for Deputies.

In the first eight months of this year, there were 822 days reconciled because of sickness, broken down as 275 for members of the Seanad and 547 for TDs.

An information note from the Oireachtas said: “Ill-health [has to be] certified by a medical practitioner as preventing the Member from performing their duties as a Member.

“In this case the Member must produce a medical certificate for the days not attended with an application to specify the dates for reconciliation in the application.”

The Department of Health believed they were lucky to escape with a €22,500 fine for a major data breach that involved “excessive and disproportionate” gathering of sensitive personal information about people who had taken legal action against the state.

In internal submissions, officials said the department could have been hit with a fine of up to €1 million and that the actual fine “fell far below the maximum that could be levelled”.

A submission to Department Secretary General Robert Watt from senior officials said the level of the fine “should as a result be welcomed” and suggested the department could despite “some reservation” accept the sanction proposed by the Data Protection Commission (DPC).

The investigation followed an RTÉ programme in March 2021 based on information provided by the whistleblower Shane Corr who said the department had a practice of collecting sensitive and personal information about vulnerable children and their families when they were involved in litigation against the state.

A busy hospital struggled with an outbreak of a new variant of a dangerous superbug trying to manage patients who needed to smoke, medical students that ended up in a ward with infection, and allowing visitors for sick people.

Internal records said Tallaght University Hospital (TUH) in Dublin was dealing with a “very active and resistant outbreak” that could be associated with “significant morbidity and mortality”.

Hundreds of potential contacts were identified with progress reports saying there were “not many options” available to treat the variety of the CPE superbug that was spreading.

The outbreak was first notified to the board of the hospital in April of this year and remained open until the end of August, a TUH spokeswoman said.

The progress reports detail some of the measures that were introduced including “visitors restricted unless end of life” and how 95% of staff were compliant on hand hygiene training and that only those with this training should be allowed on the ward.

One update noted: “Leaflets to stop visitors coming from the atrium, leaflets to be distributed to patients, wording to be updated to advise patients to not leave the ward to go to the atrium (smokers will be a problem).”

Concerns were also raised over consultants who had visited the ward at the centre of the outbreak that were not “bare below the elbow”, that is they were wearing long sleeves, jewellery, watches, or other items that have the potential to carry infection.

Another note said: “Medical students doing exams were on [the ward] – the instruction was that they did not go [there]. [Staff member] to follow up with [colleague as to] why this happened.”

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has been directed to release documents it holds on the use of surveillance cameras for tackling fly-tipping and environmental crime.

In a request made under the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations, Right to Know had sought copies of correspondence between the DPC and local authorities about CCTV.

In both its original decision and at internal review, the DPC said the records sought were not “environmental information”.

They argued that the records related to data protection and personal data processing and they contained nothing that was likely to have an effect on the environment.

The Commissioner for Environmental Information disagreed however, and said the CCTV was clearly intended to “target illegal dumping and environmental crime”.

It said the records clearly related to a plan that carried “more than a remote possibility” of an environmental impact.

The decision added: “Data protection considerations are, therefore, in my view, a critical or integral factor in the proposed use of CCTV to target illegal dumping and environmental crime.

“This means that inquiries to the DPC about potential data protection considerations pertaining to the use of CCTV to target illegal dumping and environmental crime constitute information ‘on’ the measure [that is proposed or planned].”

The DPC’s other flimsy arguments about why the records would in any event be exempt under the AIE Regulations were also rejected in the decision.

Cases like this involving the DPC are important because that office is effectively off-limits within the FOI Act, where only purely administrative records can be accessed.

However, any of their work that has an environmental impact like this is open to scrutiny.

Officials told the Finance Minister that recovery of the full €29 billion the state used to bail out the banks should not be the “over-riding consideration” as the Exchequer looked to sell off more of its stake in AIB.

Ahead of the latest share sale of the bank earlier this month, a submission for Minister for Finance Michael McGrath said the state had now been a shareholder in AIB for thirteen years and that it was key to keep reducing its exposure.

A pre-sale submission said: “Our advice for many years has been to gradually reduce our investment in the banks at sensible prices such that we can recover as much of the [circa] €29 billion we put into AIB, BOI and PTSB as possible.

“Full recovery of the €29 billion or what we put into AIB should not be the over-riding consideration that drives our decision making. Bank shares are risky and volatile and the State has already been a shareholder in AIB since 2010.”

Minister McGrath was told that “political conversations” about another sale should take place but that as long as these did not include a specific date, they were not considered sharing “inside information”.

“Therefore (if required) we recommend that you seek political clearance in the coming days, and ideally before AIB’s trading statement on November 1st, giving you the ultimate decision and authority to execute a transaction based on our advice and market conditions,” said the document.

A post-sale submission on what was tagged Project Viking VI said the latest sale had yielded €515 million and had reduced the state’s shareholding in the bank to 40.8 per cent.