Access to Information Updates
Right to Know has obtained documents under FOI allowing a unique insight into the Irish government’s increasingly strained relationship with Facebook after a number of scandals rocked the tech giant this year. Continue reading “#FacebookFiles: After the Scandals and Inside the Irish Government Meetings”
COMMUNICATIONS minister Denis Naughten told Facebook he was “appalled” by an undercover report into the company especially because he had publicly defended the social media giant on several occasions.
Continue reading “#FacebookFiles: Minister Naughten demands “significant step change” from Facebook”
These are minutes related to NAMA’s away day in March 2016. They contain a summary of where NAMA is at as of that date, and where they plan to go. It includes sections on:
As ever, we appreciate support to keep the information flowing. Join us here.
Following the passing of the FOI Act 2014, NAMA became subject to the Act (to a more limited degree than most public bodies) six months after enactment. That was mid April 2015. We sent our first FOI to NAMA on the date NAMA became subject to it. Records were released to us last week.
Our readers will be aware that we have been involved in a long battle with NAMA via the Information Commissioner and the courts to make NAMA subject to the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations 2007/2011 (similar to FOI). That process started in February 2010 when we emailed them asking for certain information, and NAMA denied it on the basis they they were not a public body under those Regulations. We disagreed with them, and it escalated from there. AIE was the only legal mechanism available to us, as the Finance Minister at the time, Brian Lenihan, had not made NAMA subject to the FOI Act.
The issue of NAMA’s status or not as a public authority under AIE wound its way through the system over the past 5 years and ultimately to the Supreme Court in 2014. We await judgment in the matter, hopefully imminently.
NAMA is now subject to FOI, but not currently subject to AIE – an unusual situation in itself as AIE has a generally more expansive definition of public body than the FOI Act.
This is the first element of what was released to us, the minutes of NAMA board meetings for 2014 (all 332 pages). Approximately 70% of the pages are redacted.
