Clemency appeals by TDs to the Minister for Justice for constituents seeking reduction of court penalties have dropped considerably due to the release of records in an appeal under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI).
The Information Commissioner, Mr Kevin Murphy, said the case had "reduced the number of representations that are made to them for the future".
He was speaking at the launch of his annual report for 2001, which showed that while significant progress had been made in the free flow of information, efforts needed to be made to ensure that those public bodies "who have been slow to embrace FOI are persuaded to do so".
Some 15 per cent of the 14,268 requests dealt with last year were refused. This compared to the 8 per cent rate in Australia, which had similar legislation.
He cited a media request made to the Department of Justice for a list of such representations by TDs; the Department refused. The case went to the commissioner on appeal and he ruled that they should be released.
There had been no requests since.
"I suspect that politicians when they saw that their representations in particular sensitive cases were liable to be in the public domain, have been much more careful about the representations they make. I think the Department of Justice would probably welcome that."
Mr Murphy said that before the appeal came to him, "the courts had already found that the system was being abused".
Approaching a Minister for Justice to waive or reduce a sentence "was always meant to cover exceptional cases". It had become an "industry in itself" and in one case a judge ruled that "this was breaching the spirit if not the letter".
The Department of Justice and Foreign Affairs still had elements of the "culture of secrecy" mindset, although he accepted they dealt with sensitive information.
He criticised the Department of Education, but said it had made great strides in its attempts to deal with requests for information about industrial schools.
And he praised the Revenue Commissioners as a model of "best practice" for the improvements it had made in the provision of information. Appeals against the Revenue Commissioners had dropped from 11 per cent to 4 per cent of the total as a result.
The commissioner also said that local authorities needed to co-operate more and release information.
There was an increase in the number of requests, particularly in relation to environmental issues, such as the siting of dumps and incinerators.
Local authorities had said they would "embrace" FOI requests, but had been slow to release information. Authorities had argued that public bodies should have time "without pressure" to make decisions about dumps but "once the decision is made, the information should be released", Mr Murphy said.
He also noted "some public bodies were failing to give sufficient reasons for their decisions on FOI requests", despite the fact that he identified this problem two years ago.
There were 3,123 requests from the media to public bodies in 2001, an increase of 23 per cent on 2000.
The full text of the report is available on the Information Commissioner's website at www.oic.ie
