Category: FOIs

I started the process of gaining a full picture of how much the houses of the Oireachtas cost the taxpayer some five months ago. I’m still working on it.

It is no easy task. For anyone who is interested in the practicalities of the FOI process, read on.

Three FOI requests have been submitted. One appeal for internal review has been submitted, and granted successfully. Thus far the process has cost €120 (despite an original quote of nearly €2,500). Despite seeking all the records in a digital spreadsheet format, I have almost always been given bulky physical hard copies, or scans thereof. And even when I do get digital formats, I have been given scans of printouts from digital spreadsheets. This makes the job of digitising the data far more time consuming and difficult.

As of now I am waiting on expenses data for 2000 and 1999, which I expect to receive in hard copy, and not even in table form. This will mean a huge amount of manual effort to tabulate the data. The Oireachtas also sought an extension on releasing this data. After that it’s 1998 data. And a huge effort to tabulate it correctly so we can understand how much our representatives cost us.

But a number of things have emerged during the process. Hold onto your hats.

As I blogged before, my original request for 2002/2001 expenses data was refused under Section 10 (1) (c) of the Act – that “in the opinion of the head, granting the request would, by reason of the number or nature of the records concerned or the nature of the information concerned, require the retrieval and examination of such number of records or an examination of such kind of the records concerned as to cause a substantial and unreasonable interference with or disruption of the other work of the public body concerned”. I immediately appealed this for internal review. Two weeks later my review was successful and is it turned out, part of the expenses record was missing:

“I am refusing access to the records for 2001 and 2002 in relation to the expenses
claimed from the Grants-in-aid in respect of inter-parliamentary activities and the
British Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body as it has not been possible to find the records in
question – which would have been created in hard copy format only. These records
are outside of the main electronic accounting system for the office so details of claims
paid are not available through this system. I should point out there is a general rule
that permits the destruction of records, particularly hard copy records, relating to the
accounts for a particular year once those accounts have been audited by the
Comptroller and Auditor General and reported on by the Committee of Public
Accounts. This process would generally conclude within 2/3 years of the end of a
particular accounting year.

Fine, we can get over that. I have sought an explanation from the Oireachtas, and it is pending. But something else has also emerged, which perhaps I should have known, but failed to notice. There is a whole other set of data related to how much our TDs and Senators spend, that is not included in the expenses system. This is the system of costs.

When TDs travel under Irish Parliamentary Association or other committee travel or parliamentary travel, they do not necessarily go through the expenses system. In other words not everything is claimed. And since I only sought “expenses” details, that is all I was provided with. Letter of the law, and all that jazz. But in the costs system, the Oireachtas pay up front for certain things, without a TD claiming for them. This skews the figures just a tad.

For example, it throws British Irish Parliamentary Association TD data for 2007 out by some €16,000. That’s €16k more than I thought on the basis of expenses data. Other figures are bigger. And I am not including the costs of sending anonymous (so far, anyway) civil servants with TDs on such trips, be it to Mexico, Oxfordshire or other far flung places.

So the process of getting a full picture, at least for 2005 to 2009, is going to be a while yet.

When I originally scanned the expenses documents of former Minister for Tourism and Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue, they were images only, and individuals pages were uploaded as individual documents. To make it easier for reference, I have combined and OCRd the expenses.

Department of Tourism

JOD Turin
JOD Manchester
JOD New York
JOD London/Ascot
JOD India
JOD Berlin
JOD Venice
JOD Stuttgart
JOD Birmingham
JOD London
JOD Paris

Ceann Comhairle

Explanatory note and schedules (21 pages)
Domestic travel and one stop shop constituency expenses (935 pages)

As part of my previous FOI for the Taoiseach’s diary for 2006, I also sought a breakdown of expenses and receipts for expenses incurred by the Department of the Taoiseach as part of a trade mission to India in early 2006. I have previously sought details from Enterprise Ireland and the Department of Education for their expenses in relation to this trip.

This is not a complete breakdown, I have some more left to scan. I will add those shortly. Taoiseach8 details some expenses occurred in relation to car hire from Cartel Limos, the same firm that brought John O’Donoghue from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3.

Travel and subsistence breakdown, India 2006
Taoiseach1
Taoiseach2
Taoiseach3
Taoiseach4
Taoiseach5
Taoiseach6
Taoiseach7
Taoiseach8

Back in August when I got copies of Ken Foxe’s FOIs relating to John O’Donoghue one of the first things I noticed was the footers. For example, if you look at this document and look at the bottom, you will notice a web address. It’s not an internet web address per se, but it does give a clue as to how the expenses system in use by the Department is structured.

The word Oracle was all over the documents, so it didn’t take long to figure out that the expenses systems in use at the Department was Oracle iExpense, part of the Oracle e-business suite – notice the “OIE_EXPENSE_” towards the end of the address (I’m not quite sure why justice.gov.ie is mentioned). Thankfully Oracle manuals not just for iExpense, but also helpful instructions for the graphical user interface, and even instructions on how to install the application are all available online.

Other bits of information were also important. Cost centre numbers, fields detailing “expense type”, “justification”, “date”, “cost center purpose”, as well as ID numbers for every expense.

So back in August, while Mr O’Donoghue was still in office, I sent an FOI to the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism: Continue reading “Database FOIs”

I will post the document first and tell the story below, it’s worth a look. The information contained in this FOI, is I believe, valuable.

Cost-benefit analyses, impact reports or preparatory reports for NAMA

Why is this information valuable? It contains a timeline of what companies were involved in consulting the Government on the formation of NAMA, and gives us insight into the process. It also contains previously unknown titles, such as HSBC’s “Project Neo”. This is likely relates to the rumoured formation of a “New Anglo Irish Bank” in 2010. And it gives us an idea as to the level of involvement of Merrill, Arthur Cox, Rotschilds, PwC and HSBC.

The background:

A little bit of a saga ended today, finally. It is worth noting the dates involved in this request.

On August 17 I sought the following information from the Department of Finance:

1) A list of all cost-benefit analyses, impact reports or preparatory reports that have been carried out by the Department in relation to the proposed National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). Please can you list the title of the document, its date, and by whom it was written.

2) A list of all cost-benefit analyses, impact reports, or preparatory reports that have been carried out by people or companies working on behalf of, or at the request of the Department, in relation to the proposed National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). Please can you list the title of the document, its date, and by whom it was written.

I received my acknowledgment as standard, which was followed up with an email. The email said it was unlikely my request would be successful but if I wanted, I could be given information outside of my request. I went along with this and it resulted in this blog post on September 30. That’s in and around the 20 day limit under the Act.

But I didn’t feel the information provided was sufficient, and I always wanted information should my request be refused. So I said I still wanted to proceed with my original request. The Department then took the date of my re-request as the initial date, thus giving them another 20 working days. This brought the result of the request into early November, despite an initial request in August.

Numerous emails were sent, and replied to. The civil servants involved were “busy” with NAMA and it was taking longer than normal to reply to my request. Last week I had enough, and wrote an email seeking an internal review as my request was now a deemed refusal since the 20 day limit had expired. Today, December 8, nearly four months later, I got the reply.