Annual Report 2008 - Text

Level of Requests to Public Bodies

Some 12,672 requests were made to public bodies under the FOI Act in 2008. This is an increase of 18% over the 2007 figure (10,704) and 7% over 2006 (11,804). It marks a most welcome reversal of the downward trend in request numbers, with the exception of 2005, since introduction of fees for requests in the FOI Amendment Act of 2003. While I am not aware of any specific reason driving this development, the number of high profile media stories emanating from records released under FOI during the second half of the year in particular may be a factor. This is considered in more detail in Chapter 2. Whatever the reasons, any increase in the use of FOI by the public is welcome and this is something I will keep under review in future Annual Reports.

Number of Requests to Public Bodies under the FOI Act 1999 - 2008
 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004  2005 2006  2007  2008
 11,531 13,705   15,428  17,196 18,443   12,597  14,616  11,804  10,704  12,672

The following table shows the ten public bodies subject to the most requests during 2008 (the previous year's position is shown in brackets). As stated in my 2007 Report, statistics for the HSE reflect the revised regional structure introduced in 2007 so direct year-on-year comparisons for 2006 and previous years are not possible. Overall statistics for the HSE are contained in Chapter 5 (see Table 8). One interesting feature of this table is the increase in requests received by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, up from 445 in 2007 to 718 in 2008, an increase of 273 requests or 61%. Most (228) of this increase was for requests for personal information, but as the Department does not maintain statistics on the volume of requests received by each of its divisions I have no information on the extent of the increase across the Department's various areas of responsibility.

 Rank Public Body    2008 2007  2006
 1  HSE South (1)  1,548   1,378  n/a
 2  HSE West (2)  1,362 1,257  n/a
 3  Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform (6) 718 445 477
 4
 HSE Dublin North East (3)
 631
 627
 n/a
 5  Department of Social and Family Affairs (7) 485 370 464
 6  Department of Education and Science (5)  457  470  1,108
 7 HSE Dublin Mid-Leinster (4) 453  590  n/a
 8  St. James Hospital (10)  280  184 131
 9  Department of Health and Children (-)  227 147 217
 10  Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (-) 219 181 170

In my Annual Report for 2007, I commented on the large decrease in requests submitted across the three key Government Departments listed in the table below since the first full year (2004) after "up-front" fees were introduced in 2003. It is clear from the 2008 figures that this pattern has been reversed, particularly for the Department of Finance where the number of requests increased by 131% from 2004 to 2008. Again, while my Office has not been given any specific reason for this development, I think it reasonable to assume that current economic circumstances have resulted in a heightened level of interest in records held on the state of the public finances and related matters.      

   2004  2005  2006 2007   2008  2004 - 2008
Department of the Taoiseach 45 60  51  71 83 +84%
Department of Finance  78 93 72  64 180 +131%
Department of Enterprise,Trade and Employment  62  86  71  57  85  +37%

Back to contents