Over 18,400 FOI requests made last year

Public bodies received more than 18,400 Freedom of Information requests last year with more than 50 per cent going to the Departments of Health and Education, said a report launched yesterday.

A "substantial" number of those related to Industrial and Reformatory Schools and to children in the care of the State, the document said.

A total of 18,443 requests were made compared to 17,637 in the previous year, according to the sixth annual Freedom of Information report, published by the Minister of State for Finance, Mr Tom Parlon.

The figures show that 41 per cent of requests made last year dealt with non-personal information, as against 48 per cent in 2002.

According to the report, 80 per cent of requests were either granted in full or were part-granted last year. A total of 7,952 requests were granted; 2,662 were refused; 3,034 were part-granted; and 922 were appealed to the Information Commissioner, some 6 per cent.

The report reveals that 10 per cent of requests dealt with last year were subject to internal review. Some 71 per cent of people (5,766) seeking information were members of the general public; 13 per cent (1,491) were journalists; 9 per cent (954) were business users; and 5 per cent (486) were staff from the public bodies. Some 250 Oireachtas members also made requests.

The Department of Education received 2,736 requests last year, and had 1,869 from the previous year with 4,110 cases still "live".

In a foreward to the report, Mr Parlon defended the introduction of fees for FOI requests and said that costs involved could be considerable.

The introduction of the "modest" €15 to address this "can be expected to have some impact on the overall number of FOI requests going forward".

For the year as a whole there was an increase in the number of requests from journalists and the public, but the figures do not differentiate between the first half of the year and the second when the fee was introduced.

In June the Information Commissioner, Ms Emily O'Reilly, introduced a report on the impact of the fees and said that use of the Act had more than halved since fees for requests under the legislation were introduced last July.

Ms O'Reilly said the media, "a key element of an open and properly functioning democracy", was now less likely to use the Act.

Requests for non-personal information had declined by 75 per cent. Requests from journalists fell by 83 per cent, and continued to decline for those three months, said Ms O'Reilly.

The purpose of the Freedom of Information Act, introduced in 1997, is to "confer rights on members of the public to obtain access to official information to the greatest extent possible consistent with the public interest and the right to privacy".