Annual Report 2008 - Text

The Year in Review

This report covering the year from 1st January to 31st December 2008 is the eleventh annual report of this Office and my sixth as Information Commissioner. As I did last year and while there is no statutory requirement on me to do so, I am including, in Part II, an account of my separate role as Commissioner for Environmental Information during 2008.

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act became law on 21st April 1997, and came into effect twelve months later on 21st April 1998. As a result, 2008 marked a decade since three important new rights were conferred on the public. Those rights are:

  • the right of access to official records held by public bodies;
  • the right to have personal information about them held by such bodies corrected or updated where necessary and
  • the right to be given reasons for decisions of public bodies which affect them.

The FOI Act changed the social contract between the public service and the public from one of secrecy governed by the Official Secrets Act to one of openness. Accountability is a mark of a healthy democracy and transparency is a cornerstone of accountability. This is the key characteristic of FOI. The right of access to information, subject to the various exemptions of the FOI Act which protect certain categories of information, is to the records themselves, not to a version of them, or an interpretation of them.

It has been said many times before and it remains the case that the FOI Act is a progressive, visionary piece of legislation with the public interest at its core. The long title of the Act sums this up:

AN ACT TO ENABLE MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC TO OBTAIN ACCESS, TO THE GREATEST EXTENT POSSIBLE CONSISTENT WITH THE PUBLIC INTEREST AND THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY, TO INFORMATION IN THE POSSESSION OF PUBLIC BODIES AND TO ENABLE PERSONS TO HAVE PERSONAL INFORMATION RELATING TO THEM IN THE POSSESSION OF SUCH BODIES CORRECTED AND, ACCORDINGLY, TO PROVIDE FOR A RIGHT OF ACCESS TO RECORDS HELD BY SUCH BODIES ....

It was notable that FOI was deemed urgent and important enough for United States President Barack Obama to act upon it immediately he took office. I was impressed by the priority he afforded to FOI and by the clarity he brought to his proposals. Just after his inauguration, he followed through on his campaign pledges to promote greater transparency by issuing directives on openness and accountability. He said "Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known."

Over the first eleven years of FOI, almost 140,000 requests for access to information were made to public bodies. Broadly speaking, 50% of those requests were granted in full and a further 23% were partially granted. In all, over 70% of requests were granted to some extent. In the area of personal information, some 85,000 people have sought access to information held about them and/or their families by hospitals, Government departments, local authorities, third level colleges and other public bodies.

My impression is that, in a year when the overall number of FOI requests showed an increase for the first time since 2005, the type of records being sought reflect a more thoughtful usage of the Act and its application as a tool to help ensure proper accountability in public administration. In Chapter 2 of this report, I highlight some of the issues which featured prominently through media use of FOI during the year. I also look at the role of settlement in my Office's efforts to resolve cases.

One of the by-products of the financial downturn has been a sharp increase in public demand for transparency and accountability particularly within public service and financial institutions. As the public see the financial gains of the past decade slipping away there is a demand to know how the turnabout took place and how various public and private institutions behaved both during the boom and after it.

This new thirst for information should cue a re-evaluation of the role of FOI in holding such institutions to account. I have noted before how many of the state institutions are outside the scope of FOI including the Central Bank and Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ireland, the National Treasury Management Agency, the National Pensions Reserve Fund Commission and the State Claims Agency. I have also commented before on the secrecy provisions which are contained in the legislation establishing a number of public bodies and which, by virtue of the provision not being included in the Third Schedule to the FOI Act, are outside the scope of the FOI Act.

Chapter 3 deals with some of the decisions which issued from my Office in 2008. These decisions have been selected for inclusion either because they demonstrate particular developments in interpreting and applying the exemptions in the FOI Act or because they present examples of common problems encountered in FOI decision making.

Chapter 4 contains statistics on FOI activity during 2008 in relation to my Office and public bodies generally.

Part II describes my separate role as Commissioner for Environmental Information and focuses on the first decisions made on appeals under the Access to Information on the Environment Regulations 2007.

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