Category: FOIs

Public money and Ahern's briefing note on Nice 2 referendum planning

In light of the Supreme Court decision surrounding information provided by the Department of Children to people via a website and a booklet funded by the taxpayer. “Public funding should not be used in a referendum to espouse a particular point of view” the judges noted. The Supreme Court said “extensive passages in the booklet and on the website” did not conform to the McKenna principles.

But is this the first time? We all remember booklets and websites used in other referendum campaigns, particularly Lisbon 2, when the Department of Foreign Affairs released white papers and booklets, sent to every house in the country using public money.

Cast your mind back to 2002. The second Nice referendum is being proposed and then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern attended a Cabinet meeting on July 10. With him were his briefing papers for the meeting, details of which were released to me by the Department of the Taoiseach through FOI, under the 10 year rule. In the context of the Supreme Court judgment and of how public money is spent this is very interesting:


The most interesting bit:

The M/FA intends to launch the White Paper as soon as possible. The current intention is to circulate the summary Information Guide to households in early September, possibly to coincide with the Oireachtas Debate on the Referendum Bill. A circulation in advance of this date would likely not achieve the desired impact. There appears to be no reason, however, why the Information Guide could not be placed on the ‘Nice Treaty’ page of the Department of Foreign Affairs website in advance of the general circulation in September.

What exactly is the “desired impact”? A ‘Yes’ vote one would assume. But is this not circumventing the McKenna principles? This was done on top of, and in addition to any work by the Referendum Commission, which was established just the day before.

So the Government was tactically sending an Information Guide to households at a certain time for maximum impact, and was planning that just the day after the Referendum Commission for Nice 2 was established. Could it be said that this type of booklet was also a case of public money being used to espouse a particular point of view?

Public Expenditure and Reform Ministerial Diary 2011

As part of an ongoing process. This is the appointments diary of Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin for 2011.



Public Expenditure and Reform spending – line by line

This data contains all expenditure data by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform for the period from inception to June 2012.

In total it contains €21,228,431.30 of expenditure, on the basis of 238 vendors who invoiced the Department for 1,565 separate invoices. It does not appear to include Purchase Orders, which the Department publishes proactively here (albeit in PDF format and only for orders over €20,000). Much of the spending involves the normal day to day spending by any government Department but gives an insight to citizens as to how public money is spent. It does not include expenses claimed or salary data.

Download the data here. (File -> Download)

This spreadsheet contains individual invoices with the largest first:

This is a breakdown per vendor name with the largest first:

For the record – Ireland seeks financial assistance letter (2010)

This is the letter from the then Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan sent to the Troika, seeking financial assistance for the Irish State on November 21, 2010. The letter was released after an access to documents request to the European Central Bank.



ECB releases November 2 letter

The ECB has emailed to say that they are releasing a November 2 2010 letter sent to Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan by then ECB president Jean Claude Trichet:

It has come to our attention that an additional letter was sent to the Irish Finance Minister at the time, which conveyed the ECB’s opinion on a piece of draft Irish legislation. For the sake of completeness, we attach said letter, dated 2 November 2010.

Of course this still leaves me wondering about the reported letters of November 4 and November 12, that the ECB have never referred to – particularly the November 12 one. I will be asking them.

Here is the November 2 communication:



Corrib earthquake documents

A small earthquake off the coast of Co Mayo sparked a flurry of correspondence within the Department of Communications, Energy, and Natural Resources.

Although no damage was caused, the Department sought assurances from Shell that pipelines in the area could withstand a 4.0 quake. The company also carried out an underwater inspection of their assets.

The documents indicate the high levels of sensitivity that still surround the entire Corrib gas project with a memo prepared for Minister Pat Rabbitte to bring to Cabinet.

– Ken Foxe (Mail on Sunday)

The documents can be found here:



Office of President expenditure at Waterford IT

This is a report carried out by Deloitte & Touche into €3.7 million worth of expenditure by the Office of the President of Waterford Institute of Technology. It was released by the Higher Education Authority under Freedom of Information legislation along with the response drafted by the college.



And the response drafted by the university: