Have the First Minister and Deputy First Minister fallen off the wagon again?

Last year, Northern Ireland's Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister  were doing so badly at Freedom of Information requests that the UK Information Commissioner's Office listed them as one of the agencies which were under special monitoring. So how did that work out? Not so well, it seems ...

In December 2012, FOIreland reported on the very poor state of responses to FOI requests by the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) in Northern Ireland. Many requests were overdue, some for nearly a year.

Evidently, we weren't the only people who noticed this. Shortly after we reported, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced that they would be monitoring the OFMDFM to check their compliance.

That was in early 2013. So what happened? Here's a graph that shows the Office's quarterly responses by percentage answered on time / overdue. Can you spot the ICO's 3-month monitoring period?

Looks like the First Minister and Deputy First Minister were good boys for three months. But when the headmaster's back was turned, it was back to smoking behind the bike sheds ...

Six months of Freedom - July

What were Ireland's journalists doing for the last six months? Freedom of Information requests, that's what. We look at what they uncovered ...

JULY

July was all about biscuits, obesity, tax evasion - and Freedom of Information

Freedom of Information Act reform is welcome
Harry McGee in the Irish Times commented on the proposed new Freedom of Information Bill, optimistically: "Overall, there is a change of emphasis apparent in the Act, with a presumption towards release and a right of access to records. How successful that aim will be depends on the manner in which the legislation is interpreted".

Act of destroying a record to be an offence under new FoI Bill
The Irish Times pointed out that the Bill proposed to make destroying records an offence. Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly was quoted as saying the Bill was 'positive for transparency' but pointed out that Minister had to “fight quite a battle” with some public bodies to ensure that they were included. (Which, given the number of bodies excluded or only partially excluded, suggests he lost a lot of battles).

Ireland begins move towards joining global transparency plan
Transparency seemed to be the flavour of the moment, with Judith Crosbie in the Irish Times reporting on the government's plans to make the country more open and transparent by joining President Obama's Open Government Partnership. That was a long time ago, of course.

IMF praises and damns Ireland's state of fiscal transparency
A more skeptical view was expressed by economic commentator Michael Hennigan, founder and editor of the Finfacts website. Giving the mixed response from government departments to FOI requests, he suggested the IMF's commentary 'makes clear that the accounting systems currently in place are closer to the times of Queen Victoria than the computer age.' As a result, he says, 'there is no uniform set of accounting rule and procedures applying to government departments, extra-budgetary funds, semi-state bodies, local governments, and public corporations.'

Waiting list for nursing homes set to double
Down to the nitty-gritty, Paul Cullen in the Irish Times had a story about nursing home waiting lists: documents disclosed under FOI 'show that the department changed the rules of the scheme for a time earlier this year in spite of legal advice that it would be unconstitutional to do so'.


Head of elderly support group Alone urges home care regulation
Again in the Times, Pamela Duncan Irish Times wrote about complaints about care home staff disclosed under FOI: 'a threat by a home help that she would only shower a disabled stroke victim twice a week because she was “sick to death” with problems caused by the client while another involved a home help who left a bucket of urine in an older man’s room, and used soiled clothes to wash him'.

HSE forked out €116k to rent beds for the obese
Another health story, Clodagh Sheehy in the Herald revealed that '26 operations to reduce weight were carried out in 2011, a further 22 last year and 13 this year so far.'

Reilly forced health cover price hike
Finally the Irish Independent's Sarah McCabe revealed that controversial Minister for Health James Reilly had 'forced all the country's health insurers to hike charges following a request from the VHI and against the advice of the sector's watchdog'. This, she pointed out, 'resulted in an estimated 300,000 people on the cheaper health insurance policies paying more for their premiums.'

Accounts reveal Greyhound board did not properly tender for some contracts
Meanwhile, dogged investigative reporter Conor Ryan of the Irish Examiner revealed some shady-looking goings on in the greyhound racing business, with the Irish Greyhound Board admitting it failed to follow the rules for tendering. Despite the precarious position facing the company, he pointed out, 'in 2011 there was a 35% increase in the expenses claimed by members of its board, rising to €71,273 for its seven directors'.

Revenue inquiry on Irish clients of HSBC with Swiss accounts
In the first of two stories about income tax, Carl O'Brien of the Irish Times obtained internal Revenue briefing documents on investigations of Irish people with Swiss accounts in the HSBC Bank. 'An initial investigation into 33 account-holders with addresses in Ireland has resulted in settlements with 16 individuals worth more than €4 million.'

Undeclared rental income targeted in Revenue crackdown
The same day, Carl reported on Revenue briefings on undeclared income from landlords: 'Officials uncovered €42 million owed to the exchequer by landlords based on an audit of more than 700 property owners. The average yield per case was €56,000.'

Moloney and McIntyre seek access to British regiment’s war diaries
Also in the Irish Times in July, Gerry Moriarty wrote about the attempts of journalist Ed Moloney and former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre to use the UK Freedom of Information Act to cast light on the IRA murder of Jean McConville. In the kind of request that would not be possible in the South, they want to access the war diaries of the British Army’s First Gloucestershire Regiment who were operating in west Belfast between 1971 and 1973.

Boat for Hillary was Gilmore's priciest present
A more light-hearted report from Cormac Murphy in the Herald revealed the gifts given to official visitors to Dublin: Tom Cruise was presented with a copy of the €15 book A History Of Ireland In 100 Objects, while Hillary Clinton got a miniature three-person currach designed by ceramicist Clodagh Redden, costing €160. 


Meet the cookie monsters
Finally, behind the Murdoch paywall, Gary Meneely in Sun discovered how much the Irish government had been spending on refreshments and entertainments: €900k in two years, what the newspaper describes as 'shocking'.

Kids, Bees and Migrant workers - and the Herald draws a blank

The big FOI story of recent days was the shocking revelations in RTE's Prime Time about conditions in some crèches in Dublin. Using Freedom of Information requests, the programme makers found that 75% of pre-schools and creches breached HSE regulations in 2012, but with few consequences.

Several newspapers picked up the story. "Details of 4,000 creche inspection reports dating back to 2011 make for deeply disturbing reading," wrote Miriam Donohue in the Irish Independent. Shane Phelan pointed out that records obtained by the paper, which showed issues cropping up as far back as 2008 in in crèches all around the country, were only obtainable through Freedom of Information requests, making it difficult for parents to judge how suitable their childcare arrangements actually were. Referring to another, different scandal, Kim Bielenberg observed that "It is no exaggeration to suggest that the state seems to be more efficient at inspecting meat plants than the places where we house small kids during the day."

The Irish Times, meanwhile, extended concerns to other age groups. FOI requests by the paper showed problems in care for elderly people in their own homes. Citing cases of misconduct in an area where there is no statutory inspection programme, the report added: "there is undoubtedly also a cohort of clients availing of home help and home care services who, because of their advanced age, do not have the capacity to complain. This means there could be examples of bad practice which are simply not on the HSE’s radar."

The Irish Examiner reported on the priorities of the Department of Health, which has recently disclosed spending of €111,022 sending officials to study negotiation skills at the prestigious Said School of Business at Oxford University since 2006.

Health, in the opinion of Information Commissioner Emily O'Reilly, is one of the two worst performing departments on Freedom of Information, the other being Justice. In a story reported on by the Independent, Evening Herald and Examiner, she told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform that there was a culture within the two departments that made them the worst offenders for disclosing data. Over the past five years, she said, Government departments and bodies had cited 230 enactments containing non-disclosure provisions for not handing over information.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter, in the news recently for disclosing police information on a political opponent, and then coming under attack for failing to take a breathalyser test when stopped (he claimed inability due to asthma, and the Gardai have no record of the incident), was defended by a former minister, Liz O'Donnell in the Irish Independent: "Someone is out to get Alan Shatter". But she admitted the department's very poor record on transparency. "The concept of freedom of information is anathema to the Department of Justice," she wrote, adding that as opposition justice spokesperson, she experienced huge frustration in extracting information in parliamentary questions. "Replies to questions were minimalist, bordering on the misleading."

There were more excellent cases of how Freedom of Information can be used to discover solid, old-fashioned reporting. The Irish Times, covering Environment Minister Coveney's vote against an EU ban on insecticides, revealed that his department had received “information and/or correspondence” from insecticide manufacturer Bayer.

In Northern Ireland, the Irish News obtained details of fines for employing illegal migrants: Penalties of over £427,000 have been imposed on traders since 2010, and a total of 50 businesses were penalised between 2010 and March this year.

Finally, Dublin's Evening Herald has been on the case of Derek Keating, Fine Gael TD for Dublin West, who came in for criticism when he claimed credit for helping to secure an extension to a local non-sectarian school, the Educate Together school in Griffeen Valley. After a local free newspaper reported the school principal's claim that the TD had had no part whatsoever in winning the extension, one of his election workers was pictured on CCTV disposing of hundreds of copies of the paper. Keating insisted that he had been in contact with the Department of Education. But when the Herald used an FOI request to see the correspondence, they found that the TD had made representations on behalf of two other schools - but none in connection with Griffeen Valley.

Money, Body Armour and the Pope

May's roundup of new stories from Ireland, north and south, obtained through Freedom of Information legislation

Image by Dunechaser via photopin cc

Military missing

Body armour, night vision goggles and rifle magazines are among the military items reported missing by the British Army in Northern Ireland, reports the Belfast News Letter.

Lower taxes for higher earners

Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton lobbied for overseas executives earning more than €500,000 to be allowed a lower tax rate - in effect, a 30% rate, according to the Irish Times.

Papal expenses

The Irish Independent reports that RTE spent almost €195,000 covering the election of Pope Francis. The money was spent on flights, accommodation, office rental and fees for local crews.

No smoke without fire

The families of the 48 young people who died in the Stardust disaster in 1981 are demanding a fresh inquiry after the disclosure under Freedom of Information of an earlier, unpublished draft of a report on the disaster, produced in 2008. They say this shows it was watered down before publication, the Irish Times reports.

Hotel battle

Property developer Paddy McKillen, a major shareholder in the group that runs Claridge's, the Connaught and the Berkeley hotels in London, is to appeal to the Information Commissioner regarding the refusal by the Department of Finance to disclose records relating to his IBRC loans. The Irish Times and the Irish Independent both report on this story.

Hospital delay

The Independent also reports on the delays in the building of the new national children's hospital, with an application for planning permission not expected for another year. Originally promised for 2015, it is admitted it may not be complete until 2018.

Cosmetic spending

Meanwhile, the Evening Herald reports that over €3 million is spent by the Health and Safety Executive on cosmetic surgery and weight-loss procedures.

Road to nowhere

Finally, the Limerick Leader has the story that Fianna Fáil councillor Cathal Crowe has been refused access to submissions to a public consultation on a €100 million road project in the city, on the grounds of  'commercial sensitivity and personal information'. The councillor is considering an appeal.

Phones, trips, banks and blood - FOI roundup

Latest stories in Ireland obtained under Freedom of Information legislation, north and south:

Photo: Duncan Rawlinson

Mobile phone thefts in Derry are up 70%, according to a report in the Derry Journal. 257 phones were reported as stolen in the city in the last year.

After 11 weeks of waiting, the Belfast Telegraph got a response to its request for information from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) about overseas trips. But the information is skimpy. There's little detail as to what the purposes of the trips are or what hotels were used. And the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) is still withholding details of their trips.

In the south, in the Irish Examiner the big story was the European Central Bank's demand that no Freedom of Information requests about the liquidation of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) be answered. The Minister of Finance pointed out that the FOI act provided for information to be withheld for a variety of reasons and IBRC requests would probably be denied under the Act's exemptions. But stories have suggested that the ECB have refused to work with the Department at all if information is disclosed.

Meanwhile the Irish Times reveals a letter suggesting that proposed €1 billion public service cutbacks may reduce economic activity by half of one percent; and a report on the Irish Blood Transfusion Service has found major deficiencies in quality assurance procedures.

What Do We Know Now? - April 2013

Some recent queries answered on the What Do They Know website:

The Police Service of Northern Ireland cannot say how many referrals it has from the Central Investigation Service of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. It would take 3,600 hours to find out.

Body Cameras are not worn in any capacity in Banbridge District Council.

Personal statements are not used to determine entry to Medicine courses in Queen's University Belfast, but they may be used as evidence of mitigating or extenuating circumstances.

The following stories were featured on the @FOIreland twitter account:

The PSNI say there are around 1099 people on the sex offenders register in Northern Ireland, but they don't have a record of how many re-offend. They also reveal that Tasers were used 630 times in the last five years, but it would take too long to work out details of age or ethnicity of those tasered.

Finally, the Department for Employment and Learning revealed the names of 215 organisations and businesses who had employed people using the Youth Employment Service over the past five years. The list includes ASDA, Barnardos, Carrickfergus Borough Council, Halfords, Jollyes Pet Shop, McDonalds, Premier Inn, Sacred Heart Primary School, Sinn Fein, and Subway.

Wind farms, Airport VIPs, and gay blood donors - FOI Roundup

This month's crop of FOI requests from Irish newspapers so far

The Irish Times reports that An Taisce (southern equivalent of the UK's National Trust) has objected to 40% of all planning applications for wind farms received by the government's planning body, despite being 'enthusiastic supporters' of the government's plans to generate up to 40% of energy from renewable sources.

The newspaper also reports on various items of government expenditure - with good news for citizens trying to make ends meet: catering for Cabinet meetings, it turns out, averages just €20, with SPAR being one of the main suppliers. At the same time, the Department of the Taoiseach spend €1,700 on cufflinks. The article highlights the fact that €22,000 was spent in six months on VIP treatment for political visitors to Dublin Airport, with former President Mary Robinson a major user of the service.

(The current promotions page at SPAR Ireland reveals that €20 would buy just 20 packets of Hobnobs. That's easily a whole packet per minister. However, if they're willing to share, there should be enough for a cup of Barry's tea each as well.)

Meanwhile, north of the border, both the Belfast Telegraph and the News Letter covered the decision of the UK Information Commissioner to order disclosure of the legal advice received by Health Minister Edwin Poots on the subject of blood donations by gay men. Legal advice is usually prevented from disclosure by Section 42 of the FOI Act, so it's unusual for the Commissioner to decide that the public interest is in favour of disclosure: the key issue here seems to be that in the rest of the UK the policy is now to accept donations from men who have been celibate for a year, yet Northern Ireland retains a lifetime ban. The Minister is said to be considering an appeal. Interesting, if the appeal is successful, a decision on whether to veto disclosure would have to be made jointly by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, which has never happened before.

Other stories revealed recently under FOI (and published already via the FOIreland Twitter account, @FOIreland)

Irish Times - senior civil servant 'had an inappropriate level of contact' with Barclay tycoons; and the paper is told that releasing information on the horse meat scandal would not be in the public interest.

Irish Medical Times - representatives of the National Office of Clinical Audit are concerned that results of clinical audits will have to be disclosed under Freedom of Information legislation. (“We are advised by senior counsel that while Freedom of Information requests may well be denied, refusals may result in challenges in courts.") [NOTE: to read this article, you have to pretend to be a medical professional, because the people who run the Irish Medical Times website are idiots]

Irish Independent - retired civil servants have been paid more than €1.3 million for conducting job interviews; and Irish universities have spent €1.7 million on rats and mice for medical experiments.

The Detail: fire crews in Northern Ireland take as much as four times as long to respond to emergencies in rural areas than in urban ones.

NAMA, judges, Orange attacks and Limavady drunks - news roundup

What have newspapers been finding out lately with Freedom of Information? Here's the most recent roundup.

Freedom of Information itself was part of one important story, as Gavin Sheridan of thestory.ie and Information Commissioner Emily O'Reilly ended up in court - the High Court that is, as the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the government's 'bad bank', sought to overturn a decision of the Commissioner. She had ruled, in response to a request from Gavin, that NAMA is a public authority.

NAMA is not subject to Freedom of Information legislation but would be subject to Access to Information on the Environment regulations - but only if it is a public authority, a definition it sought to avoid when Gavin made a request under the regulations. The Commissioner, who as well as regulating the Freedom of Information Act is also Commissioner for Environmental Information, agreed with his interpretation. As the Irish Examiner reported, in a ruling that will have surprised nobody outside NAMA, the Court decided that the authority, which exists to serve the public, is indeed a public authority. The Irish Times observed that Justice Mac Eochaidh's ruling dismissed the agency's claims not to be as 'absurd'. Thanks to a parliamentary question from TD Pearse Doherty, Gavin was able to report that the case has cost the taxpayer more than €120,000.

Money continues to be the main focus of many FOI stories. The Irish Times reports that the state's judges have been paid €1.67 million in expenses in the past year, mainly for travel and accommodation. The paper also reported that the opposition party Fianna Fail received almost half a million Euro to cover its legal costs in a recent tribunal. Meanwhile, the Irish Examiner reported on a costly decision by the liquidator of the IBRC, which took over the assets of the disgraced Anglo-Irish Bank. Not challenging a ruling by a judge in London could end up costing Irish banks €460 million.

Despite having a stronger Freedom of Information regime, people living north of the border also have to struggle to get the facts they need, as a letter writer to the Belfast News Letter argued:

Stormont departments, long noted for their reluctance to live by either the letter or the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), have taken a new approach to their record-keeping whereby they do not record information which could be embarrassing if made public – thereby escaping the provisions of the Act.

Writing in the paper, Fiona O'Cleirigh argues that the lack of interest in the province by mainstream British media means that central government spending is subject to very little scrutiny:

Strong stories abound in this complex community, which includes a fascinating aerospace industry, and an assortment of quangos that would hardly look out of place in the twilight zone.

When stories do get uncovered, they tend to be about violence rather than money. With 114 attacks made on Orange halls in the past two years, just 12 people have been arrested and only four were charged, according to information disclosed to the News Letter. Meanwhile, the Londonderry Sentinel reports that in Limavady, crimes of violence following closing time in pubs and clubs in the town are averaging one a week.

25 Things We Know Now about Northern Ireland

The website What Do They Know allows people to send Freedom of  Information requests direct, online, to public authorities. Here is a selection of things we know now about Northern Ireland, based on recent requests using What Do They Know.

1. The  Northern Ireland  Civil  Service does  not  have  a  policy  on people  in  a  close  personal  relationship  working  together.
2. Craigavon Borough Council asks such staff to declare such relationships, but does not record them despite this being proposed as a policy in a report highly critical of the council.
3. The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland has a policy – apparently – of neither confirming nor denying whether individuals identified in their investigations are police informants. But if such a policy exists, it is not actually written down.
4. Newry and Mourne District Council (‘SAVE PAPER! PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT!’) have 3-4 Lever Arch files of material on the naming of a playground after hunger striker Raymond McCreesh … which they printed out and sent to the requester.
5. In the last financial year, the Northern Ireland Policing Board had 22,623 words translated into Irish, and only 32 words into Ulster Scots.
6. Northern Ireland uses around 246 million carrier bags a year. The Department of the Environment’s levy on carrier bags is expected to raise £2.3 million in a year.
7. The Police Service of Northern Ireland had arrested 195 and charged 164 in connection with flag protests by 20 February.
8. Northern Ireland Housing Executive tenants are not specifically prohibited from flying flags on their homes.
9. Belfast City Council did not charge the company managing the Christmas Market in City Hall any fee when they extended it by three days, to make up for the impact of flag protests on traders. They did this because they believed it would attract people back into the city centre.
10. The Council considers it would take 24 hours of staff time to find the names of all the companies approached since 2006 to tender for developing its website.
11. Peter Tallack, a dog expert in the case of the ‘pit-bull type’ dog Lennox, which was put down last year by Belfast City Council, was paid a total of £10,598.57 in respect of training, court appearances, dog examinations and travel.
12. Banbridge Borough Council have still not responded to a request from last November about dog fouling statistics.
13. Belfast Education and Library Board has still not replied to a query about construction projects.
14. Lisburn City Council has two non-white employees, out of 525.
15. Civil Service departments spend quite a lot of money on media monitoring, from the Department of Social Development which spent £7,340.43, to the Department of Education which spent £15,884.88. The Department of Justice, however, was way out of line: it spent £60,667.
16. In 2012, Queen’s University Belfast made 412 offers to students for its 262 places in Medicine.
17. The University has a scoring system for interviews for its dentistry courses. However it believes it is not in the public interest to disclose how it works. Definitely not.
18. The Deputy Chief Constable of Northern Ireland does NOT have a superinjunction of any kind.
19. The Northern Health and Social Care Trust has paid out more than £8 million in legal settlements for clinical negligence over the past 5 years.
20. On 27 December last, in Accident and Emergency at Causeway Hospital, between 5.30pm and midnight, the average time before triage was 35 mins, and then 168 minutes before seeing a doctor (Category 4).
21. In the last five years, 5 out of 17 grievances and 6 out of 8 dignity at work cases in the Department of Education were fully or partly upheld.
22. The highest-paid staff member of the University of Ulster is paid nearly fifteen times as much as the lowest-paid.
23. There are 24 children in Belfast primary schools whose home language is Somali.
24. Ballymoney Borough Council has issued just two Fixed Penalty Notices for dog fouling since 2005.
25. Two Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland have bought toilet rolls direct from a supplier, possibly because of shortages in the regional warehousing.

News roundup - fast tracking, low taxing, the embassy flagpole and taking money from kids

The latest stories uncovered by FOI legislation in Ireland, north and south

The continuing effects of the 2009 economic collapse made up a major element in the latest batch of revelations from the press:

The Irish Independent revealed that of 114 former ministers entitled to the state's generous pension arrangements, just seven had made use of a scheme to allow them to surrender part of the payments. Widely considered extravagant in view of the current economic conditions, pensions are payable, in some cases, from age 50. Those taking the full amount include former Taoisigh Bertie Ahern (who had given up some of his payment while still serving as a TD) and Brian Cowen. Meanwhile, the paper reports that current Minister of Social Protection, Joan Burton, was told she was 'taking money from children's mouths' by a mother affected by child benefit cuts, in one of several emails and letters disclosed under the Act.

Accusations of the kind of clientelism widely considered to have helped create the present situation continue to be aired. According to the Independent, Taoiseach Enda Kenny found time to lobby officials to get student grants fast-tracked for his constituents. His close ally, Health Minister James O'Reilly, is having to explain why his department fast-tracked hospital upgrades in the constituencies of two cabinet colleagues (one of them Brendan Howlin, responsible for the proposed 'restoration' of Freedom of Information legislation), who promptly announced them to constituents even before the Health and Safety Executive had been informed. Another Reilly controversy rumbles on as Irishhealth.com reported that the Minister had been censured for failing to answer Dail questions on the issue of a primary care centre situated, at the last moment, in his contituency.

Health records have proved another issue where FOI is involved, according to the Irish Times.  Failing to produce records under the Act was just one element in a 'wall of silence' a family faced from Tallaght hospital, in the case of the death of a 61-year old painter which resulted in the payment of a six-figure sum after a court case lasting more than seven years. The paper points out that, while records of the deceased can be accessed through FOI (data protection rights end at death), in the absence of release instructions from the patient, the Health and Safety Executive has to decide in each case whether disclosure is in the public interest.

The Times also discovered, using FOI, that errors in drafting led to the publication of incorrect information in a government-issued booklet on the children's rights referendum; and in another economy-related story, it disclosed that the American Chamber of Commerce has lobbied the Irish government to ensure that top executives should pay no more than 25% of their income in tax. Finally, it failed to mention FOI law at all in reporting that twelve companies had been disqualified from the government's JobBridge internship programme.The names companies were not named, it said, 'for data protection reasons'. (Data protection laws apply only to individuals)

The Irish Examiner discovered that money from the Irish foreign aid budget had been spent on replacing an embassy flagpole and fixing an ambassador's swimming pool, and broadcaster RTE reported that 128 prisoners are at large from the Republic's open prisons, including one sentenced for murder.

North of the border, on the other hand. All is quiet - under FOI at least, with only one story to report. Website The Detail reports on inequalities in punishments for benefit fraud in the province - with one person getting just 200 hours community service for falsely claiming £87,000, while a teenager was sent to prison for illegally claiming £91 in Jobseeker's Office.

Bed blockers, hospital food, and the cost of a testicle - news roundup

Latest stories from Ireland turned up by FOI requests:

The Belfast Telegraph used FOI to disclose that nearly 19,000 days were spent in Northern Ireland hospital beds by healthy patients - so called 'bed blockers'.

The Irish Examiner attempted to find out how much the Health and Safety Executive spends on overheads in hospital food budgets - but were met with a demand for 'search and retrieval' fees of over €500 to get the information. The same newspaper revealed that an unnamed body funded by the HSE and tasked with aiding frontline services has suffered 'serious fraud' in the past three years.

Meanwhile, the Irish Times reveals that property owners in the Republic are much less likely to have their houses repossessed than in Northern Ireland. Other disclosures include the detail that compensation paid to Garda Siochana (police force) included over €140,000 for loss of a testicle, and that one barrister was paid €450,000 in 22 months by the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The Irish Independent writes about the letters cabinet ministers have sent to local authorites on behalf of their constituents. Numbering almost a thousand since the government took office, the letters show issues from requests for social housing and action on anti-social behaviour to complaints about rodent infestations and help in obtaining new front doors.

Finally, the Londonderry Sentinel discovered, using Freedom of Information legislation, that Universities minister Dr Stephen Farry visited Derry City twice between the beginning of 2012 and Halloween. (Evidently not a busy news day in Derry, then).

How Many FOI requests are abandoned on cost grounds?

How many Freedom of Information requests in the Republic of Ireland are abandoned because of excessive costs of search and retrieval? In Civil Service requests, it might be as much as one in three.

Sometimes the biggest obstacle to Freedom of Information is not the stuff public bodies try to hold back; sometimes it’s the information nobody thought to ask in the first place.

Take, for instance, a simple question: how many Freedom of Information enquiries in the Republic of Ireland never get answered because it would cost too much to find the records and collect them together?

To anyone with a passing knowledge of the Act, its major weaknesses are the €15 fee for making a request, and the fact that so many agencies – such as NAMA and the Garda Síochána – are not covered. But for many people using it to access public information, the most frustrating element is the charge for ‘search and retrieval’. Agencies, which charge €20.95 per hour to extract the information, are supposed to present requesters with an estimate of the cost of doing so, allowing them to abandon the enquiry if they are not willing to pay.

This is the point where many good enquiries stop. Members of the Dáil and Senate have complained about being presented with large cost estimates for getting answers:

Deputy Sean Fleming: The Department of Justice and Equality charged a fee of €15,000 in one case, which is extreme. … Last Christmas, I submitted a freedom of information request to seek information on a matter announced by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, in the budget. I was told it would cost me €1,200 in search and retrieval fees. I abandoned the request. We do not know in how many cases something similar has happened. Some people are given such figures, yet the Minister once replied that the highest fee he charged for search and retrieval in 2011 was €83. He did not mention the €1,200 he charged me and that caused me to withdraw my request.

Deputy Shane Ross: Once, when I went looking for information on FÁS, the difficulty in getting that information, even though FÁS was subject to the Freedom of Information Act, was extraordinary. The obstructions put in the way were extraordinary and most difficult to counteract. My memory of this is clear. I received an anonymous tip-off of where to look and what to look for. I admit this shows a lack of journalistic skills on my part. I approached FÁS and asked for the information. The organisation put every possible obstacle in the way. I am open to correction but, from memory, initially the organisation said that for the particular questions asked — relating to details about what took place in Florida and the junkets being run for the benefit of staff and directors — the process would cost me €1,000 or something equivalent. 

 Dail Debates, Freedom of Information (Amendment) (No.2) Bill 2012, Second Stage, 6 July 2012.

Clearly, this is a huge disincentive to asking for information. It is out of line with other jurisdictions, many of which do not make such a charge. In the United Kingdom, search and retrieval is costed at £20 an hour, but it can only be charged if the total exceeds £450 (in central government, £600). In Scotland, the hourly cost is £15, meaning that information which takes less than 40 hours to collect is provided free.

Where these figures are exceeded, the public authority does not actually need to do the work – it can simply refuse on cost grounds, and usually do. Most people find that a fair arrangement: you can get a certain amount of work for free, and above that it’s up to the organization whether they are willing to provide the information for payment.

Under the Irish system, the meter can start running straight away (in practice, many public bodies only charge above a certain level). Requesters are at the mercy not only of the estimates produced by the authority (which can be appealed, for a fee, to the Information Commissioner) but also to the quality of its records management: if the filing system is bad, the enquirer pays more.

Clearly, this is not ideal. How many enquiries are prevented in this way? Nobody collects these statistics. But the Information Commissioner’s Annual Report provides a clue.

According to the 2011 report, of the 16,472 requests dealt with by public bodies, some 1,661 were ‘withdrawn or handled outside FOI’. That’s 10%. For Civil Service Departments, the percentage was 16%. No explanation is given, but overwhelmingly these are likely to be requests withdrawn for reasons of cost estimates.

If you compare this to the Departments of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, which operate under the UK Freedom of Information Act, the result is striking. In 2011, of 3,240 requests received, just 80 were withdrawn, mainly for reasons of costs. That’s just 2%. Which suggests that perhaps as many as 1,300 of the enquiries withdrawn in the Republic would have been answered under the legislation in place in Northern Ireland.

And one more point: Irish Civil Service Departments responded to 3,499 requests in 2011. But only 1,506 of these involved non-personal information; the rest were requests by people for their personal data, which can only be charged for if they involve ‘a significant number of records’. It’s likely the 16% of withdrawn requests, a total of around 560, were mainly non-personal. Which means the proportion of such requests withdrawn could be as many as one in three.

There are various ways to get around this. Deputy Sean Fleming, in 2012, suggested a ‘cap’ of €500 on such charges. That makes some sense. But how many citizens, in these days of financial stringency, can afford to fork out that sort of money?

Jobs for the boys, a chef without a kitchen, and the mystery of the disappearing footballs

The latest roundup of news stories generated by Freedom of Information in Ireland

Jobs For the Boys (and Girls)

A report in the Irish Times disclosed how nine vacant seats on the board of the Blood Transfusion Service - worth nearly €8,000 a year - were being filled by political appointees, six from Fine Gael and three from Labour. Although applications from the public were invited, none of the 28 who applied were appointed. The paper also revealed plans for a direct meeting between government ministers and representatives of the Catholic Church, as part of an ongoing 'structured dialogue' process. Controversial prelate, Cardinal Sean Brady, it disclosed, wrote to new Taoiseach Enda Kenny after the election offering his prayers. Meanwhile, a Department of the Environment report shows concerns in local government caused by the current government hiring freeze: plans are afoot to fill empty jobs for outdoor workers and to hire 200 graduates to fill a staff 'generation gap'.

Bad attitudes

The manner and attitude of staff was the major issue of complaint from patients in the Rotunda Hospital last year, according to the Dublin Evening Herald. None of the total of 104 complaints were about infection or cancellations. Meanwhile, it revealed that expenses billed to the Office of Public Works from the minister's office fell from over €36,000 five years ago to under €500 in the first six months of last year, although the story preferred to focus on the €412 paid on a hotel in China while investigating procurement of clothing for public services such as the Gardai and Defence Forces.

A Chef Without a Kitchen

The Irish Independent, meanwhile, reports that the Department of Education was investigating why retired teachers were being employed by schools, often for weeks at a time. The figures, revealed by the paper in a request, showed 237 incidents. The Department, however, refused to disclose details of which schools were involved. Unlike in the UK, individual schools are not subject to FOI in the Republic. Another story reports the bizarre situation of the hospital in Galway which is paying a chef €46,000 a year even though he doesn't have a kitchen available and food has to be bought in from a local bar.

The Men Behind the Wire

The Irish Examiner, meanwhile, reveals why the Department of Justice spends over €40,000 a year on footballs - it's because the light plastic balls, used in prisons for recreation, regularly end up unusable after being destroyed by the razor wire covering the walls.

Culture and Security

Meanwhile, north of the Border, the Londonderry Sentinel writes that as Derry City prepares to become UK City of Culture, a planning committee set up for the event included representatives of the police services Security Branch, as well as the Head of Crime (a police officer, apparently, and not a master criminal as might be supposed).

What do we know now?

A roundup of disclosures from recent FOI requests in Northern Ireland on What Do They Know.com

Here are some things we know now that we didn't know a month ago, from the website What Do They Know?:

Northern Ireland Water paid £7,277 for maintenance and repairs to security and fire alarm repair systems, and thinks creditors should be paid a minimum of £40 when public service debtors fail to settle within 30 days.

Queen's University Belfast revealed that they admitted 26 international students to study Medicine in the last academic year; however, neither the grading system nor the criteria for selection at interview were disclosed, to avoid giving an advantage to students in future interviews. (Unlike, say, the University of Aberdeen, which provided the interview scoring sheet, and the University of Edinburgh, which pointed out that they do not interview applicants for Medicine).

We also know that there are four people who have lifetime Security Passes to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and Antrim Borough Council has spent a mere £13,315 on maintaining its website over the last seven financial years.

Northern News Roundup

A roundup of recent news from Northern Ireland, gleaned through the Freedom of Information Act

NI Prisons: The case for a public inquiry
A recent article in investigative journalism website The Detail calls for an inquiry into the treatment of vulnerable inmates in Northern Ireland's prisons, citing FOI responses that show issues raised by a report several years ago remain unaddressed.


NI prison officers get up to £16,000 in overtime
Prison officers in Northern Ireland have been receiving up to £16,000 a year in overtime, with the department paying out over £180,000 a week in the last three years, according to a report in the Irish Times.


Sinn Fein had ‘valid certification’ for replica assault weapons
The Londonderry Sentinel reports that replica rifles carried by teenagers as part of a hunger strike memorial event in Dungiven were inspected by the police service in advance and officially certified. The Sentinel, which publicised at the involvement of young people with replica armaments at the event last August, obtained the information via an FOI request.

News Roundup

Recent revelations under the Freedom of Information Acts, north and south

Kerry deal still clear as butter
Despite a Freedom of Information request, the Irish Independent has been unable to discover what incentives were offered to Kerry Group to set up its Global Technology and Centre in Ireland. The documents were withheld or heavily redacted, as commercially sensitive.

Joan Burton's team blew €5K on staff party

The Irish Mail on Sunday revealed that the Republic's Department of Social Protection spent over €5,000 on its annual party for current and retired staff, including €1,000 on spot prizes. There was particularly strong criticism at the cost, while the Department was deciding which social welfare benefits to cut.

EU presidency website to cost State €250,000
Among the costs of the upcoming Irish presidency of the European Union, the website alone will cost nearly a quarter of a million Euro. The figures can be seen in contracts obtained through an FOI request and published on thestory.ie. 

Queens made no formal app for extra numbers - U4D

Queen's University Belfast was allocated extra student places on the basis of nothing more than an informal conversation between the Vice Chancellor and the Minister, according to the Derry Journal. This information was provided via FOI to Derry-based lobby group U4D, which is pressing for more places for the local University of Ulster, and Assembly member Pat Ramsey of the SDLP.

 

Slow, Slow, Slow ...

"Our Department’s performance compares favourably with that of other jurisdictions," Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness told his party colleague, Cathal Ó hOisín, in the Northern Ireland Assembly back in March, when asked about timeliness of responses to Freedom of Information requests. It turns out he was being economical with the truth - on a scale that would put Scrooge to shame.

The Minister pointed out that the Welsh Government responded to just 75% of requests on time, while both the Scottish Government and Whitehall managed just 84%. He compared these to the response rate of 88% for his department.

This sounds impressive - until you delve into the details. The 88% statistic relates to the entire period from 2005 to 2010. When Mr Ó hOisín asked for a more recent update, the Minister simply ignored this. It's not hard to see why: the statistics for 2011 are, quite frankly, disgraceful. The OFMDFM Annual Report on Freedom of Information shows that, of 168 requests received, just 70 were answered on time. That's a total of 42%. What's more, 18 requests - 11% of the total, are listed as 'still being processed'.The report is undated, but appears to have been published in October this year.

This is an astonishingly poor performance from the Department. Not only were almost three out of five requests were not answered in time, but more than one in ten requests were still unanswered ten months after the end of the year.

Maybe on Planet McGuinness that counts as a favourable response rate. Not anywhere else.

(For background to this, see my previous entry)

Update: on the same day as this was posted, the Information Commissioner's Office announced that the FOI performance of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister will be monitored by them.

A Fragile Flower

How serious are Northern Ireland’s First Minister and Deputy First Minister about transparency? Not very, it seems. To take 320 days to answer a request might be a one-off error; but foot-dragging in a number of recent FOI responses suggests the Ministers approach disclosure with all the enthusiasm of a sulky teenager scribbling homework on the way to school – and nobody seems to be doing anything about it.

The long delay to Jeffrey Dudgeon’s request, finally delivered a day before they would have been forced to disclose by a court, was clearly not a case of mere sloppiness, a fact no doubt evident to the Information Commissioner, whose growing exasperation at the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) can be read through the polite lines of repeated Decision Notices:

12 May 2011 – after an internal review was still uncompleted after more than 70 days:

“The Commissioner would also expect a public authority to inform a complainant if the internal review was going to take longer than 20 working days and explain why. The Commissioner would remind the public authority of its obligations in this regard.”

24 May 2011 – a January request was still under consideration by the Minister’s Private Offices. The Office was unable to say when it would be able to respond.

“The Commissioner would … remind OFMDFM that the Act does not provide for such an extension to the statutory time limit. The process of seeking such approval must be completed within the time limits set out in the Act.” 

4 July 2011 – An enquiry from the previous October had resulted in a review for ministerial approval by January, but nothing more was heard until a request from the Commissioner in June, when it was promptly provided.

“The Commissioner notes that this is the third Decision Notice he has issued in three months relating to a failure by OFMDFM to respond to a request. The Commissioner has expressed his concern to OFMDFM and will consider whether further action is necessary.”

26 September 2011 – a July response was still outstanding after two months.

“Prior to this decision the Commissioner has issued three Decision Notices in the past six months which record OFMDFM’s failure to comply with the Act in respect of timescales for response. The Commissioner expects this pattern of non-compliance to be addressed by OFMDFM.”

24 October 2011 – four long-overdue requests. Three were from September the previous year, the other from December.

“Prior to this decision the Information Commissioner has issued at least three decision notices in the previous six months which record the failure of OFMDFM to comply with FOIA in respect of timescales for response. The Information Commissioner expects this pattern of non-compliance to be addressed by OFMDFM.”

(By the standards of decision notices, that’s pretty much steam coming out of the Commissioner’s ears)

12 December 2011 - two months later, another failure to meet the statutory timetable.

"despite agreeing to disclose the financial information OFMDFM did not do so until three months later. The Information Commissioner reminds OFMDFM of its obligations in relation to the statutory time limits in the FOIA."

16 July 2012 – after six months of quiet, the Commissioner feels compelled to raise his voice again, with a request from January was still uncompleted:

“The Commissioner is particularly disappointed that OFMDFM has failed to respond to his correspondence regarding this complaint. The Commissioner considers it important to give public authorities an opportunity to reconsider its handling of the case before issuing a decision notice. Many public authorities take this opportunity to rectify procedural failings, or provide additional explanatory information to the complainant. However that has not happened in this case”

The Commissioner, in such circumstances, is entitled to call upon a public authority to sign an undertaking to improve their behaviour, like this one from the Welsh Assembly. But instead, he again simply “reminds OFMDFM of its obligations in relation to the statutory time limits in the FOIA.”

It’s not just on the Information Commissioner’s website that this can be seen: over at What Do They Know, requesters have been facing the same approach – consistently being told that long overdue enquiries were ‘still under consideration’ – as if they had never heard of the Commissioner.

There’s good evidence that this is not simply incompetence or slack management – in fact, that the culture of the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister is one of resistance to enquiries, and this may well be a product of Northern Ireland’s peculiar politics.

With what Mick Fealty of the Slugger O’Toole website calls the ‘fragile flower defence’, those currently in charge like to claim that the province needs special treatment to defend it: that certain disclosures “could prevent the maturing of the Executive in Northern Ireland” because they would threaten the cohesion of the mandatory coalition government.

The Belfast News Letter, which says the Executive wrote this year to Westminster asked to be allowed, like the government in the South, to charge for requests (which caused an immediate decline in their number there), seems sceptical about this claim, pointing out that the former DUP First Minister, Ian Paisley, criticised what he called ‘lazy journalists’ using FOI after his son’s close business relationship with a developer was revealed using the Act. Interestingly, his Sinn Féin counterpart, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness told the Assembly this year that ‘There is absolutely no doubt that freedom of information allows people to abuse their access to information.’ What this suggests is not a genuine concern for security but rather a grudging approach to transparency.

Finally, in order to find out more, I submitted an FOI request to the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, asking how many requests this year had been overdue and for how long.

Guess what? The response is now overdue.

News Roundup #4

Katherine Donnelly: New frontiers are opening up in drive to lure foreign students
FOI request reveals that the highest number of international students in the Republic's third-level sector is University College Dublin, with 2,620 bringing in over €30 million. Total international students in Irish colleges amount to 32,000.

(My former colleagues in Scotland will no doubt wince at the statement that "Ireland is up against giants such as Australia, Canada and the US in seeking to lure them." It seems their efforts have gone unnoticed ...)

Shortall accused Reilly over second list
Documents obtained by the Irish Times under FOI show that then minister of state Róisín Shortall confronted Minister of Health James Reilly over changes to the list of primary health care centres which included two new centres in his own constituency. 

Pat Finucane murder pistol handed back to British Army by RUC
A bit of cross-border FOI - using the UK's Freedom of Information Act, RTE reporter Richard Dowling obtained from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) a copy of a formerly secret chapter of the Stevens Report into the death of solicitor Pat Finucane at the hands of Loyalist paramilitaries. This showed that the gun used, which originated with the British Army, was handed back to them despite its status as evidence. Writing on the RTE website, Dowling points out that this request would not have been possible in the Republic as the Garda Siochana are still outside the remit of FOI in Ireland.

Roundup #2

A roundup of recent stories about FOI in Ireland

Craigavon Borough Council have a code of conduct requiring staff to declare any familial relationships with other staff. But since it does not monitor this, it is unable to provide information as to how many familial relationships there are between staff.


According to the Irish Times, an FOI request in the Republic has revealed a that a report sent to the Minister for Arts on the proposed merger between the National Library and the National archives - expected to save a million Euro - would “seriously undermine” the ability of the “already very strained” bodies to deliver on their statutory obligations.

The Freedom of Information Act is often used by press officers as a 'delaying tactic', the Society of Editors Conference in Belfast has been told. At the organization's annual conference, the editor of the Belfast Telegraph claimed that it is now more difficult to access information that should be in the public domain:
“we are in a pretty shutdown society,” he said.“For information that can be given easily, we actually face delay. Information is actually harder and harder to get hold of.”