Author: Ken Foxe

Minister Michael McGrath was advised not to comment on the controversial deletion of records by Simon Coveney even as his officials were briefing colleagues that text messages had always been subject to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

Mr McGrath – whose Department of Public Expenditure are responsible for FOI – was told that if asked about Zapponegate and the deletion of text messages, he should say “I am not going to comment on the specifics of a particular case”.

At the same time, his officials were telling colleagues across the civil service that there had never been any doubt over the inclusion of text messages under the legislation.

Mr Coveney caused significant controversy in the late summer after saying that he deletes text from his phone, at first saying it was for storage reasons, but later clarifying that it was over hacking concerns.

An updated briefing on record retention was delivered to civil service decision makers in early September with one slide saying: “It is well established that text messages have always been a ‘record’ for FOI purposes.

“This may include messages held on non-official systems such as personal devices, WhatsApp, Gmail, etc.”

Dublin City council chief executive Owen Keegan hit back at critics of radio comments he made about homeless people sleeping in tents and safety on the streets of Dublin.

Mr Keegan – who was at the centre of more controversy last week over an ill-judged letter about student housing – had told a radio station that the number of tents in the capital added to perceptions of “edginess” in the city.

The city council chief executive responded directly to a number of people about his tent remarks according to emails released by the council, in one saying he totally rejected the “characterisation of my comments and your assessment on my motives”.

Mr Keegan said he fundamentally disagreed with people who “promote” the use of tents for homeless people and “seek to sustain this inferior form of accommodation”.

He said tents were removed on average of three or four times a week by the council and this only happened where “the occupant has taken up an offer of secure accommodation”.

“Sleeping in tents is dangerous, unhygienic and a poses serious public health risk to both the occupants, and at times to the general public,” he added.

In another response, the city council chief executive said while there were valid reasons for somebody to live in a tent, it was never the best option.

“Notwithstanding the potential difficulties with hostel accommodation, I believe living in a supervised hostel is much safer than living in a tent in the city centre,” he wrote.

Internal emails also reveal that the city council was advised not to make official statements on Mr Keegan’s tent comments for fear of “adding fuel to the fire so to speak”.

The local authority had received several media queries about his remarks, but their external public relations advisers had recommended letting the matter fizzle out.

An email to Owen Keegan from one of the council’s communications staff said: “In other words if we try to justify our position, media might just use this to keep the argument going.”

You can read the full set of records below.

More than 260 Irish Rail services have been at least an hour late during the past two years.

Figures from Iarnród Éireann reveal that 237 trains were at least sixty minutes behind schedule, while 28 were more than one hundred and twenty minutes late.

Irish Rail had to pay out almost €17,000 to passengers and commuters for late trains, cancelled services, bridge strikes, and other operational hitches during 2020 and so far in 2021.

The rail operator said they had paid out €6,785 so far this year in refunds in 351 separate claims.

The majority, or 226 of the refunds, related to “train failure”, while timekeeping led to refunds in 62 separate cases.

Also logged were refunds for an incident on the line (26 cases), signal fault (19 refunds), track fault (7), security issue (7), bridge strike (3), and weather conditions (1).

Not all claims for refunds are paid however, and of the 517 cases received so far this year – refunds have issued thus far in only around two-thirds of cases.

An Air Corps crew were ordered not to leave an airbase in Abu Dhabi because of a Covid-19 testing fiasco as part of the evacuation mission for Irish citizens fleeing Afghanistan.

The government Learjet had been dispatched to the UAE to support the evacuation but was diverted at the last moment to a military airbase where the crew were told they were confined to an area with no sleeping facilities and only couches.

The last-minute hitch in late August caused chaos in the Department of Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs with diplomatic staff saying they were reluctant to intervene with the UAE government.

It also caused havoc with flight plans because of concerns the Air Corps crew would not have the required rest periods before flying the aircraft back to Ireland.

Internal files from the Department of Defence detail how the plane was first diverted to a military airbase with “no reason” provided.

In 2017, the Department of the Environment issued a tender for a company to review the guidelines for implementation of the AIE [Access to Information on the Environment] Regulations.

The review took place, and the guidelines were at least substantially finished by the end of that year. They have never been published since.

Through Right to Know, we sought a copy of them under the afore-mentioned AIE Regulations last April.

The Department refused the request saying the material was in the course of completion, and that it constituted unfinished documents or data, which were therefore exempt.

We appealed that decision to the Commissioner for Environmental Information.

In submissions, the department made a number of arguments about the risk of releasing draft records, delays over ministerial sign-off of the guidelines, and that it would not be in the public interest.

It emerged at that stage that the department no longer even intended to publish the records, because a separate review of AIE was now underway which meant the guidelines themselves would need another review.

Ultimately, the Commissioner decided in our favour, in a decision that was particularly strong on the public interest.

In the decision, Peter Tyndall wrote: “I do consider that there is a public interest in disclosure of the draft Guidelines in circumstances where they have been in preparation since 2017 and where, according to DECC, a final version of the Guidelines will not be published until revised AIE Regulations are enacted.”

You can read that decision here.

You can see the guidelines for yourself below.

A motorist has run up an unpaid parking bill of more than €2,100 in one local authority area.

Shameless drivers have in some cases been hit with more than a dozen tickets each but simply refuse to pay any of them.

The problem is most pronounced in Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown in Dublin where four different motorists owe more than €1,000 in unpaid fines.

Figures from three separate councils have also shown that in one of Dublin’s local authorities – more than one in three tickets went unpaid last year.

In Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown, a single driver with a UK or Northern Ireland registered car owes the council €2,140 relating to fifteen separate unpaid tickets.

Two Dublin-registered cars have each amassed €1,552 in parking debts with the local authority, covering sixteen tickets each.

Another ‘D-reg’ car has twelve outstanding tickets and a bill of €1,164, according to the records.

A row has broken out between Greyhound Racing Ireland and RTÉ over the station’s decision to cease broadcasting and coverage of the sport.

Greyhound Racing Ireland (GRI) have also hit out at national tourism agencies Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland for halting promotional activity around the sport.

The outgoing GRI chief executive Ger Dollard said the greyhound industry was being held to a different standard than other sports, including horse racing.

He said it was “unacceptable” that coverage and engagement with greyhound racing had ended and that they had taken it up “at the highest levels of government”.

Internal records from GRI detail how the industry has battled with significant reputational issues ever since an RTÉ Investigates programme in 2019 about greyhound welfare.

A briefing document was prepared for an economic analysis that Greyhound Racing Ireland had commissioned from economist Jim Power.

It said: “The change in public perception has also been reflected in the refusal of a number of media outlets to cover greyhound racing, most notably RTÉ and the withdrawal by Fáilte Ireland/Tourism Ireland from including [it] it its promotional activity or permitting [us] to participate in promotional activities relating to the greyhound industry.”

• Full statement on these records from outgoing GRI CEO Ger Dollard.

Gardaí have received 76 complaints of harassment, bullying, and sexual harassment from members over the past five years including eight complaints so far this year.

A detailed breakdown shows that seven male gardaí and one female officer have alleged they were the victim of bullying at work in 2021.

However, An Garda Síochána said there had been no complaints of either harassment or sexual harassment in the first nine months of the year.

The supply of some blood types dropped so low this summer that introduction of a national emergency blood management plan was feared, which would have led to widespread cancellation of medical procedures.

Internal records from the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) detail how stocks of O negative blood had fallen as low as 2.3 days-worth of supply and had been running below three days for several weeks.

Minutes of an executive management team meeting said that the Covid-19 pandemic had increased reliance on what was described as an “increasingly tired donor panel”.

It suggested that direct donor text messaging needed to be looked at to “better convey the urgency of the situation” according to records released under FOI.

The IBTS ended up importing blood products from the United Kingdom, the first time it had done so since the late 1990s.

Back in June, Minister Michael McGrath promised that a review of the Freedom of Information Act was to take place.

Given added impetus by the fallout from the controversy over deletion of records during ‘Zapponegate’, this review has now been brought before Cabinet.

Right to Know is publishing this discussion document on some of the areas we believe are most in need of reform.

We do this because of our concerns about any review of information access that would be driven primarily by public bodies themselves and poorly informed ‘cost of FOI’ concerns.

This happened in 2003 and resulted in the gutting of the FOI Act and the introduction of €15 ‘up-front’ fees for requests.

The number of requests being made each year was effectively halved as a result; other restrictions were also introduced.

The abolition of the up-front fee in 2014 by then Minister Brendan Howlin helped restore the act closer to its original form.

Yet problems persist in how FOI operates in Ireland, with widespread non-declaration of records and some public bodies repeatedly failing to meet their obligations.

This is a working document. It is based on our experience as users of the act, and the many emails and messages we receive from the public and the media about their own experiences.

Not everything in it will be possible; there are other problems that we may not have identified here.

It is published to help inform the debate on what kind of Freedom of Information Act Ireland should have … from the perspective of those who make requests.