TheStory.ie

In the 2011 programme for government, the Fine Gael and Labour coalition made a commitment to hold a referendum on the abolition of the Seanad.

In October 2013, 51.7% of the electorate voted for its retention.

These are the Cabinet records covering that process.

This is a list of all purchase orders of more than €20,000 from the Department of Justice in 2019.

A huge portion of the bill related to the provision of accommodation for asylum seekers in the direct provision system.

The other expenditure – on IT, media services, transport etc – is all general spending by the department last year.

While some of it may relate to direct provision, most of it will relate to the day-to-day business of the Department of Justice.

These lists of purchase orders worth more than €20,000 are supposed to be published by all public bodies as a matter of course.

The Department of Justice had ceased this practice and the record was obtained under FOI by Right to Know.

The department has now committed to publishing it to their website and hopefully will resume routine publication of this important information.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2014, the Data Protection Commissioner was only partially included as part of the new law.

This means that only administrative records from the office can be sought under FOI and that all other records relating to investigations, including high-profile ones like those into Facebook and the Public Services Card, are entirely out of reach of the public.

This document is a submission by the Department of Justice explaining why they believed the Data Protection Commissioner should be protected from the full scope of the FOI Act.

Back in February 2015, Right to Know made a request for access to details of use of what is known as the ministerial air transport service by the President of Ireland.

Little did we know that it would take four years to get a decision.

The case was delayed time and time again with the government claiming at one stage it could impinge on state security or more bizarrely that use of the jet constituted personal information.

This, despite the fact, that such information is published as a matter of course for the Taoiseach, Tánaiste, and all other Ministers: https://www.defence.ie/ministerial-air-transport-service-mats

Ultimately, the Commissioner for Environmental Information ruled that the details were environmental information and that the travel logs should be released.

You can read them below:

Today, Right To Know – in collaboration with US access to information NGO Public.Resource.Org (“Public Resource”) – announced they have initiated legal action against the European Commission at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

Right To Know and Public Resource are seeking from the European Commission access to descriptions of certain technical standards agreed by the European Committee for Standardisation (Comité Européen de Normalisation) or “CEN“.

We sought technical public safety standards with the force of law that include the safety of toys, including children’s chemical sets and and those relating to the chemicals present in products such as finger paint.

Late last year, we sought access to these standards via a request under Regulation 1049/2001 (containing Aarhus Convention related amendments). The European Commission refused access to these standards at both the first juncture and after a confirmatory appeal.

Our legal action at the General Court seeks to annul this decision of the Commission to refuse access to these standards.

It is the view of both Right To Know and Public Resource that harmonised technical standards form part of EU law and should therefore be available to any EU citizen – without restriction.

We rely in particular on the decision of the Court of Justice in James Elliott Construction (C-613/14) that “a harmonised standard … and the references to which have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, forms part of EU law”.

Right To Know Director Gavin Sheridan said: “We believe all EU citizens have a right to access and read all EU law. EU law includes harmonised technical standards – and those technical standards include the safety of toys.”

“We are pleased to be working with Public Resource and its founder Carl Malamud who has a very long and admirable record in working on access to information rights globally.”

“We are both perplexed as to why EU citizens – including parents – are unable to read the standards imposed on toy manufacturers concerning the levels of chemicals to which their children might be exposed. It seems odd to us that EU citizens must currently pay for access to this information – it should be available for free and without restriction on re-use, or dissemination.”

Public Resource and Right To Know are represented by Morrison Forrester in Berlin, Germany and by FP Logue solicitors in Dublin, Ireland.  

Public Resource is a not-for-profit public charity established in the United States to make government information more broadly available to citizens and to help make governments use the Internet more effectively.

Right To Know is a not-for-profit company established in Ireland that seeks to vindicate the rights of citizens to access information, as part of their fundamental rights to freedom of expression.

MORE than €930,000 has been spent on commemorations and events for the one hundred year anniversary of the first sitting of Dáil Éireann this year.

The expenditure included €16,500 on VIP services at Dublin Airport, almost €20,000 in accommodation at two of Dublin’s finest hotels, €200 for a harpist, and just over €10,000 for 5,000 Dáil branded hats for the event.

Details of the €934,000 spend were released under FOI with the Oireachtas saying the Dáil anniversary had been one of the key commemorative events in the Decade of Centenaries programme.

As part of the celebrations, they invited speakers and chairpersons from all EU member state parliaments and from the United States.

In total, 31 “overseas parliamentarians” along with 44 support staff travelled to Ireland with €7,708 spent on “local transport costs” for car and bus hire.

An accommodation bill of just under €20,000 was run up at the five-star Westin Hotel (€13,030) and the four-star Davenport Hotel (€6,968), according to the records.

Another €16,567 was paid out for “fast track airport reception” and other VIP facilities at Dublin Airport.

Entertainment costs came to just over €9,000 with €200 spent on a harpist to entertain the visiting politicians and €8,898 on catering for a dinner hosted in Leinster House.

An itinerary for their trip shows how the visitors were taken on a tour of Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the university’s famous library, and also to the Guinness Storehouse.

Another €228 was spent on “Irish confectionary” with a further €228 paid out for photography costs, the records say.

The Oireachtas said significant costs had been incurred in “dressing the round room” of the Mansion House to make it historically authentic for the centenary events.

Six days of venue rental cost €29,970 with another €30,247 spent on lighting for TV production. There was a further €33,000 spent on production design and €17,152 for “room dressing”.

Furniture hire cost €5,250 while music composition, arranging, and music rights cost just under €11,000.

One thousand bound commemorative booklets were also produced for the event with each of them costing €13.50. Another €3,240 was spent on photography while €1,885 was paid out for design of invitations, running order, and booklets.

A total of €35,000 was spent on Dáil 100 merchandise, which included 15,000 tote bags, 5,000 hats, 15,000 pens, 4,000 commemorative pins, and 10,000 badges.

Catering costs, which included public engagement days, a press gallery dinner, a staff reception, and meals for those working, came to €22,742.

As part of the “public engagement experience” that ran as part of the event, €22,000 was paid out to actors for their part in a theatrical performance of centenary-related events.

Another €1,959 was paid out for a fabric pop-up photo booth, while €10,409 was spent on a photography exhibition.

One of the largest projects was the digitisation of historical records, which was done in conjunction with the National Archives, and cost €37,400.

The Oireachtas said there had also been an estimated cost of €15,000 for historian services but that a final invoice was still awaited.

Extra staff costs came to €40,900, according to records with 96 staff brought in for cleaning, usher, and “meet and greet” duties over the course of the events.

A specially designed website was also set up for the commemorations with history articles, photographs, and historic records made available online.

The design cost for the dail100.ie page was €33,075 with another €152,478 spent on the “build cost”.

The Oireachtas said the commemoration had been staged “to give a full and proper context to the formation of the First Dáil as one of the key events in our history as a state”.

They said: “The programme runs all year and includes events from the Centenary sitting in January to the Dáil na nÓg event in November 2019.”

Costs involved in the fit out of the Mansion House were significant because “as a venue, it required a great deal of professional work and services to create the look and feel appropriate to the historic nature of the Centenary occasion”.

They said arrangements for parliamentarians from other counties were “in keeping with normal hospitality” and that additional staff costs covered ten days of duties for civil servants, cleaners, ushers, service officers and catering”.

A statement said: “Some of the expenditure incurred is for products and services which will be used throughout the year such as … merchandise for students and other visitors to Leinster House.”

STAFF from Met Éireann have been advised not to talk “despair” over climate change and use positive language to show people they can make a difference.

An internal communique says using words like “inevitable” could create a feeling that nothing can be done and lead to “inaction” from the public.

The advice is contained in a brand new set of guidelines for Met Éireann staff that issued in January and which was released under FOI.

It suggests: “We can discuss the choice we face between a future with more climate change and larger increases in extreme weather, and one with less. The future is in our hands.”

Met Éireann said the new advice came in response to increased queries about weather and the human influence in climate change.

It suggested using metaphors like “the weather on steroids” or how global warming was “stacking the deck” towards more and more extreme weather events.

The advisory said a member of staff could say something like: “Heat-trapping gases act like steroids in the climate system, increasing the odds of extreme heat, heavy downpours, and some other types of extreme events.”

They said this would communicate that while extreme events do occur naturally, they were now happening more frequently and more intensely.

It explained how staff could also say that global warming was “loading the dice towards more rolls of extreme events”.

The document explained how a large number of studies showed that “human induced global warming” had increased the likelihood of extreme weather events across the planet.

They said that if Ireland experiences a drought or heatwave, as happened last summer, it was correct to point to the increase of such events due to human activities.

It said: “The answer to the question ‘Is this event due to climate change?’ can be framed as ‘events of this type have been made more likely by climate change’.”

They also said it was no longer appropriate to say that a severe weather event was categorically not linked to climate change.

Instead, staff were advised to say these things were “more than likely part of the trend of increasing extreme events”.

The guidance also said to talk about what was known and be careful of talking about “uncertainties” and “caveats”.

One suggestion was to say something like: “Global warming made this heat wave at least four times more likely to occur, or increased the odds of this event by 400%.”

It said it was important to be clear that climate change was “happening now, and is human-caused” even if there was no certainty over blaming it for a particular event.

The guidance also suggested they “reframe poorly posed questions”.

It explained: “Scientists being interviewed are often asked, ‘Did climate change cause this event?’ Reasons for asking such a question can relate to liability, context, planning and more.

“However, it remains a poorly posed question, with no simple yes or no answer, due to the multiple factors involved in all events.”

Staff were advised to turn these questions on their head and identify particular events that were very unlikely to have happened in the absence of human-caused climate change.

Met Éireann workers were also cautioned about using certain scientific terminology that might meet one thing professionally and another to the general public.

It said the word “uncertainty” had a particular meaning for scientists to discuss a range of scenarios or model results.

However, for the public, “’uncertainty’ means we just don’t know” and it would be better to talk about ranges of outcomes instead.

Scientists also sometimes use the phrase “low confidence” for data or modelling but that it didn’t mean there was no trend or projected change as the public might assume.

A statement from Met Éireann said: ‘Staff [here] receive a lot of queries from the media in relation to the weather and climate change.

“This communication was issued to help them effectively communicate the role of climate change in influencing a weather event.”