Over the past several months I’ve been asking Irish Water for a series of records under the FOI Act. Some of the results have led to more FOI requests, others have led to outright refusals, including one that has been appealed to the Information Commissioner. One recent refusal was particularly interesting.
An array of meetings within Irish Water and meetings with other senior officials, including two Ministers and with the Garda Commissioner, were not minuted. I asked for the minutes of particular meetings of which Managing Director John Tierney was a part. These included the following, where no minutes were kept:
Legal meeting: Jun 27, 2013 – No minutes
Minister Meeting: Oct 31, 2013 – No minutes
Minister Hogan/Rabbitte meeting: Nov 6,2013 – No Minutes.
Minister meeting: Apr, 29, 2014 – No minutes
New ERA: May 12, 2014 – No minutes
Garda Commissioner: June 9, 2014 – No minutes
Irish Water/Gardai meeting: Sep 10, 2014 – No minutes
Metering Meeting: Oct 8, 2014 – No minutes
Finance Meeting: Oct 20, 2014 – No minutes
Why were these meetings not minuted?
Here is the refusal:
It looks like the only way to put a halt to the gallop of busy bodies like yourself,Gavin, is to keep no minutes at all.!
Lol.
You can’t beat the cunning bas*ards, can you.!
And some of them are not being released due to possible adverse effect on Irish Water?? No minutes from minister meetings? Is that legal? Don’t they need to take minutes?
“No minutes” kinda makes a farce of a government which promised “transparancy”.The whole proceedure is undemocratic and would be the envy of North Korea.We MUST demand on the WORLD STAGE an open,independent inquiry involving maybe experts from abroad uncontaminated with Irish cronyism/corruption.