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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.