NEW STATE bodies should automatically be required to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, Ombudsman and Information Commissioner Emily O'Reilly has said.
Producing her annual report, Ms O'Reilly said some recently created agencies such as the Road Safety Authority are not obliged to deal with queries.
The Department of Finance has told the Information Commissioner that it is willing to bring in regulations to make the RSA and other excluded agencies under the FOI net, though she wondered why they were not covered from the start. "Given the number of new bodies established each year . . . I consider it urgent that this matter be addressed," she said.
Repeating her long-held belief that the Garda Síochána should be covered by FOI, she said she believed that "it is an inevitability" that that will happen some day. Police forces in other jurisdictions have long since been obliged to answer FOI applications and "the sky has not fallen in there".
Particularly concerned about the Immigration Bill, she said asylum and immigration applications would be excluded under the legislation currently before the Oireachtas.
Now 10 years old, the Freedom of Information Act has been "largely a success story", though she was critical of curbs put in place by the Government in 2003 "before they had given it a chance to settle down". The number of applications continues to fall following the introduction of fees in 2003: 10,704 requests were made to public bodies in 2007 - a decrease of 9 per cent on 2006, and 27 per cent down from the figure recorded in 2005, though that number was boosted by former industrial school residents seeking their own files.
Journalists' applications for information also continue to fall, down to just 8 per cent of the total number, caused by the introduction of fees and by the tougher rules in place since 2003 which have barred release of substantial amounts of information.
Sharply critical of Fingal County Council, Ms O'Reilly said the local authority failed properly to deal with applications for files seeking information about the construction of the prison at Thornton Hall in north Dublin.
Describing the treatment of an applicant, and of her office, as "most unsatisfactory", Ms O'Reilly said Fingal did not have any rules in place governing the creation, retention and destruction of files, contrary to all best practice.
Some State bodies, most notably the Department of Transport, were criticised for repeatedly failing to respond to applications within the four weeks prescribed by the legislation.
