Right to Know has won a case where we had sought information on the number of gardaí convicted of a crime, any disciplinary proceedings against them, and whether they were still part of the police force.
Under the FOI Act, we had sought this data from An Garda, some of the only type of information that is available under the very restrictive information access regime that applies to policing in Ireland.
Even though the data sought is anonymised, An Garda said release was exempt under Section 37 of the FOI Act, which deals with personal information.
It is yet another example of the growing tendency of public bodies to fall back on “personal information” arguments to block release of all sorts of data, some of which was previously available under FOI.
An Garda also claimed the material was exempt under Section 35 of the FOI Act, which deals with information obtained in confidence by public body.
That argument was entirely rejected by the Information Commissioner in his decision, which you can read below.