Facts and figures surrounding the Freedom of Information Act.
• Irish public bodies have dealt with 130,000 requests from the public, media, business and political interests over the past 10 years
• On average, 70 per cent of these have been granted either in part or in full
• The number of public bodies covered by the FOI Act has increased from 67 in 1998, to approximately 520 currently
• The Office of the Information Commissioner, Emily O'Reilly, has received 5,300 appeals, or just over 3 per cent of the total
• 4,058 of these were valid appeals, and 25 per cent were decided or settled either fully or partly in favour of the appellant
• Applications fell from 11,531 in 1999 to 10,704 in 2007
• Journalists made 3,123 requests in 2001, but just 885 in 2007
