Annual Report 2008 - Text

Deemed Refusals

The FOI Act imposes time limits on public bodies for the various stages of an FOI request, i.e. a decision on a request should issue within four weeks and, in the event of an application for internal review, a decision following internal review should issue within three weeks. A breach of these time limits (whether by means of no decision or a late decision at internal review stage) means that the requester has the right to take it as a deemed refusal of access, and is entitled to apply to my Office for review of any such deemed refusal.

I became concerned at the number of cases coming to my Office where the requester had received no response or a late response from the public body concerned. My Annual Report for 2007 was the first in which I listed those instances where applications were received by my Office as a result of no reply or late reply to FOI requests by public bodies, at both the original and internal review stages of the process, and I urged public bodies to make every effort to ensure no repetition of this. Clearly, my main concern is that, for whatever reason, some requests are not being answered at all. While the Central Policy Unit of the Department of Finance collects statistics on the overall level of FOI usage, I decided that my Office would continue to monitor non-compliance with the Act in relation to those cases which are the subject of applications for review. I intend to keep this area under scrutiny.

Relevant figures for 2008 are presented in Table 20 in Chapter 4, from which it can be seen that there have been 17 instances of public bodies not complying with the Act's requirements. In fact, of the 13 bodies listed for non-reply in 2007, seven are again listed for 2008. As I commented in my 2007 report, it is completely unacceptable that public bodies would fail to observe their statutory duties by not responding, or by responding late, to FOI requests. In the interest of balance, I have also undertaken to consider and report on the explanations given to my Office by public bodies claiming that, for whatever reason, a response within the deadlines imposed by the FOI Act was not possible.

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