‘Willy Wonka’ makes hundreds of information requests to Department of Agriculture

A John or Jane Doe appears to have made more than 30,000 information requests to the Department of Agriculture under pseudonyms linked to Willy Wonka, Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe, the High Court has heard.

In a judgment delivered on Wednesday, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the requester is more likely than not to be an individual rather than a group of people and seems to have a particular interest in American cinema from the 1980s and later.

The State-owned forestry body Coillte and its parent Government department both told the court they experienced an “unprecedented” increase in requests under the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations during 2022.

Coillte told the court the “concerted and co-ordinated campaign” has required it to expend significant resources, including deploying three additional staff to deal full-time with the requests.

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The Department of Agriculture said its annual average of 167 AIE requests ballooned to 32,297 in 2022, of which 30,630 related to forestry matters. Willy Wonka made 745 individual requests to the department over six days in the autumn of 2022, the department said.

The number of queries is “absolutely unprecedented” and has forced it to increase AIE section staffing, which has a knock-on effect for other areas, the department added.

Under the legislation, a public body has four weeks to process an information request, with a further four weeks if required. Coillte said there was no prospect of it being able to process the “unprecedented” number of requests within the permissible time period.

Coillte put together a table setting out its views on the possible inspiration behind the requesters’ identities.

Among those seeking information was Ben Wade, who, Coillte said, could be a reference to the character played by Russell Crowe in the 2007 film Yuma. Jess Robin might be linked to Neil Diamond’s performance in the 1980 move The Jazz Singer. Stanley White was the name of a captain in the 1985 film Year of the Dragon, Coillte added.

Coillte said it dealt with earlier requests in the normal way because at that point they seemed like one-offs. The issue only became apparent in March 2022 when it began to realise a significant number of pseudonymous requests were of a similar style, type and phraseology.

In the months from then until June 2022 it received 130 pseudonimised requests. It has received no more of these types of requests since June 7th 2022, it said.

Generally, Coillte replied to the requests seeking the individual’s current address and confirmation the name was the requester’s actual legal name. When none of this information was provided it regarded the requests as invalid.

The requesters then sought an internal review before appealing 81 rejections to the Commissioner for Environmental Information. The commissioner addressed 58 of the cases in a block, with 23 more still to be decided.

In its decision, the commissioner ruled it had jurisdiction to consider the appeal and found Coillte was not justified in treating the requests as invalid.

The State forestry firm appealed to the High Court seeking to set aside this decision. It wants a declaration that the commissioner erred in accepting and considering the purported appeals.

The court should also declare that Coillte was entitled to require requesters to provide confirmation of their name and address, it says.

Mr Justice Richard Humphreys decided that the appeal could not be determined without referring questions of interpreting EU law to the Court of Justice of the EU.

Among the issues referred is one asking whether the EU directive that gave rise to the AIE Regulations defines an “applicant” as a natural or legal person identified by their actual name and/or physical address, or if it includes an anonymous or pseudonymous person whose contact details are identified only by email.

The reference also asks if the directive prohibits a public authority from seeking confirmation about a requester’s identity where the authority has formed a reasonable view that the identity is questionable.