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'.

Viagra, A Fortress of Silence, and Ming in Two Places

Viagra: image by digital pretzel via Stock.xchng.

The latest stories generated by FOI requests in Ireland.

The affluent Dublin South region is spending close to a million Euro a year on Viagra, according to figures released to the Irish Independent. This may possibly be of interest to Minister Alan Shatter (62), recently in the news for disclosing confidential data about another deputy. Shatter, whose constituency is in Dublin South, has also been in the news when Laura, his saucy novel published 24 years ago ('When she loosened her grip and her body relaxed, he knew he was going to erupt') was reported to the Censorship of Publications Board.

Fellow Dublin South TD, independent Shane Ross (63), complained in the Irish Independent that the Garda Siochana - not subject to Freedom of Information requests - were 'a fortress of silence, permanently alienated from the current demands for transparency'. His requests for information about expenses have not had a response for three months.

He refers to concerns raised about accusations of collusion by the force with a convicted drug trafficker. An independent investigation by the Garda Siochana Ombudman Commission was highly critical of failures to disclose information. 63 requests were made for information - only 17 were handed over in an agreed three month time frame; six took more than a year and one has still not been disclosed. 'The independent probe took four years,' Ross points out, while a gardai internal verdict on the issue of penalty points - which found no serious offences had been committed - 'took a matter of months'.

The collusion allegations were touched on by Emily O'Reilly, Information Commissioner and Commissioner for Environmental Information, when presenting her offices' annual reports. She called attention to an increasing tendency by public bodies to put requests on the long finger. Failing to cover for staff leave and closing the FOI unit for an entire month were among the worrying behaviour by authorities. Meanwhile the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation had decided unilaterally and without warning to cease collecting statistics on FOI requests. Of 188 bodies covered by the Act, 110 had failed to provide returns, which made it impossible to produce monitoring figures.

Separately, she blamed the recession, and the need for medical details to support welfare claims, for the 38% increase in requests, mainly for personal data, received last year.

The Irish Times reported worrying differences in response times to cardiac emergencies in different regions.  Just one in three of the people in the Western region received attention within 8 minutes, the recommended target, compared to 60% in the East.

The Irish Independent revealed that Andrew McGuinness, son of the Public Accounts Committee chair John McGuinness, claimed over €30,000 in overtime while working as personal secretary to his father in the Department of Enterprise. Meanwhile, in an attempt to avoid negative publicity over the use of the government Gulfstream jet, details of the use of the jet are to be published proactively.

Finally, it was disclosed that independent deputy Luke 'Ming' Flanagan and a Fine Gael senator made use of a little-known rule of the Oireachtas to have themselves marked as present in Leinster House, when they were actually on a delegation to Morocco. Although the trip was funded by the Moroccan government, flights to the value of €6,333 were paid for by the Irish taxpayer.

Other stories:

A report in the Tyrone Times shows that 44 suicidal patients a week attend Accident and Emergency services in the area.

The British government is to hire private investigators to track down Irish students who have defaulted on over €4 million in student loans. This amounts to nearly half of the Irish students who received UK loans.

Inspection reports obtained by the Irish Independent show serious lapses in standards in childcare facilities.

The Central Bank was warned of problems with a James Joyce €10 coin before it was issued, according to broadcaster RTE. Although the coin featured an error in a quotation, it sold out within two days.

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.

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.

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).

News Roundup

Recent stories revealed under Freedom of Information

HSE boss ‘can keep €160k over-payment’

The Irish Examiner reports that the acting head of the Republic's Health and Safety Executive has been overpaid by over 160,000 Euro, but will not be asked to repay the money as it is their fault, not his.


Staff shortage ‘compromises’ state watchdog

Also at the Examiner, it has been revealed that the Office of the Comptroller General, in charge of keeping track of public spending, is operating well below its proper staffing level - because of cuts in expenditure.

Service held in memory of teenagers killed in Belturbet

According to the Irish Times, the Department of Justice has refused a request from RTE's This Week programme to a file on a bombing 40 years ago.

Tax breaks for political and sports memoirs criticized

The Arts Council has criticized the inclusion of memoirs of politicians and sports personalities - and books such as The Irish Seaweed Kitchen - in the scheme which allows non-fiction books a tax break of up to €40,000, the Irish Times reports. Books are supposed to be related to an arts subject. The provision, automatically extended to fictional works, is not considered to cover, for example, the memoirs of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.


Record number of businesses served closure orders

The number of food businesses forced to close by health inspectors in the republic is up by over a third: 90 have been condemned as posing a grave and immediate danger to public health, according to the Irish Independent. The causes included rat droppings and live cockroaches.

Fury as State pays €50,000 to wash windows

The Evening Herald writes that the Department of Social Protection has paid fifty thousand Euro to clean the space between double glazed windows on a single government building.


The mystery of the Oireachtas member who ran up €95 bill on one phone call

As the Irish Mail on Sunday has revealed, since phone calls made by members of the Dail and Senate are not logged for legal reasons, nobody knows the origin of some of the very expensive phone calls emanating from Leinster House - including one to Columbia which cost 95 Euro. Full details are available on TheStory.ie.

Called to the Bar

Freedom of Information was exercising the minds of Dáil deputies and Senators recently, with much concern expressed over the bill - but in this case it was the bar bill causing concern.

A report in the Irish Independent revealed that public representatives were outraged that they could be 'named and shamed' in future FOI requests which could reveal the amount of their bar tabs: a total of €73,000 is still outstanding this year for the Leinster House bar and restaurant.

Previous FOI disclosures have shown that several had unpaid bills exceeding a thousand Euro, with one owing €3,572. But until now, names have not been revealed; in the future, deputies and senators have been told they will be named in responses.

When it comes to expenses, the situation is more complicated. About a third of deputies receive 'unvouched' expenses - they are given an amount to spend, and not required to account for the money. The remaining two thirds are given a substantially larger sum to spend, in return for 'vouching' for their expenses - they have to have receipts. But as The Journal.ie revealed earlier this year, the receipts are not usually disclosable under FOI, for the simple reason that the records are not held, except by the representatives themselves (and not therefore disclosable).

The 'vouched' expenses system is monitored by a system of auditing in which only one in 10 representatives are required each year to produce their receipts. And while this probably acts as a reasonable check on corruption, it means that in only a fraction of cases the expenses are publicly available.

In the recent budget, it was announced that the system of unvouched expenses was to be ended as 'untenable'. But since this means the one third of deputies who currently receive their expenses under this system will now be able to claim about €10,000 a year extra, it's not likely to actually save money.

The Minister's picture

A tweet from Irish blogger NAMAwinelake:

led to the discovery that the website of the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport has a disclosure log:

DTTS Disclosure Log

It does seem a lot for a photograph of the minister. Why did it cost more to photograph Leo than the opening of the "new World Class coast Guard Centre"? [And why does 'coast' not warrant a capital letter?]