Tag: FOI

NAMA seeks stay pending Supreme Court appeal

Last week we received word that NAMA intends to seek a continuation of the stay on the judgment of the High Court in relation to National Asset Management Agency -v- Commissioner for Environmental Information [2013] IEHC 86 (that “and includes” means “and includes”), pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The continuation of the stay would prevent the judgment from taking effect. This would mean that NAMA would not be subject to AIE requests in the interim.

The judge in the case, Judge Colm Mac Eochaidh, invited myself as the requester, to make a submission to the court, as he was concerned about the impact on my rights in the
event that a stay is put in place.

Appeals to the Supreme Court are taking in the region of four years to be heard in the absence of an application for priority. And even if the case is deemed a priority it could still take at least a year for the matter to be dealt with on appeal.

Counsel for NAMA indicated that it did not intend to make written submissions to the court in relation to the application, but intended to rely on certain authorities (such as Danske Bank v Niall McFadden).

We have formulated a written submission to the Court and intend to make an oral submission to the court in the morning, April 17. It is due to be heard at 10.30am.

We will update as we get news, and publish our submission to the Court tomorrow. You can follow us on Twitter @gavinsblog and @fplogue.

Tomorrow it will be 1,169 days since our AIE request was sent to NAMA. It is estimated that thus far the case has cost the taxpayer €121,350, and any Supreme Court appeal will obviously increase that figure.

Micheal Martin's letter to Mario Draghi

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin wrote to ECB president Mario Draghi in January asking for debt relief on the Anglo promissory notes. In a letter released to thestory.ie from the ECB, Martin stressed the importance of Ireland obtaining a deal on the debt, stating:

The people of Ireland fully understand the legal constraints faced by you as President of the European Central Bank in relation to monetary financing of government. In a more flexible system most or all of this debt should simply be absorbed permanently. However, there is no clear legal or economic impediment to a restructuring of the notes on such a basis as to significantly reduce their impact. A longer term and lower cost would make a major contribution to Ireland’s recovery.

Mr President, there are many issues concerning Europe and recovery which divide parties in our country — this is not one of them. You can be assured that the arguments which you hear from Ireland are backed by a broad and deep consensus.

The ECB refused access to other documents relating to the IBRC bill on a number of grounds including:

…some of the documents that you requested contain internal and preparatory views that are also protected under Article 4(3) of Decision (a document containing opinions for internal use as part of deliberations and preliminary consultations within the ECB or with NCBS). The ECB considers that disclosing these documents would undermine the possibility for ECB staff to freely submit uncensored advice to the ECB’s decision-making bodies and that it would thus limit the ECB’s “space to think”. It is therefore in the public interest to protect internal consultations and deliberations. Disclosing the documents would also undermine the possibility of an effective, informal and confidential exchange of views with the Central Bank of Ireland, which is part of the Eurosystem. On the basis of the content of these documents, the ECB notes that there is no overriding public interest that could justify their disclosure, and it is not possible to grant partial access to them without undermining the interest protected.

Full documents:





FOI implementation review panel

Last month we were asked by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to participate in a review of the implementation of FOI (NOT related to the legislation, but rather to how the legislation is implemented).

We agreed, in the view that being part of a process of review is better than not – and there is a need for the views of readers and supporters of TheStory.ie to be represented.

Other participants in the review include Tom Felle from the University of Limerick, Colm Keena from the Irish Times, Maeve McDonagh from UCC (for whom I have given guest FOI related lectures, pro bono, to UCC students), Nuala Haughey from Transparency International Ireland, Seamus Dooley from the NUJ, Peter Feeney from RTE, Stephen Rafferty from the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC), former secretary general of the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs Gerry Kearney and some FOI managers from the Department including William Beausang, Ronan Fox, Jacinta O’Meara and Ron O’Connor.

As always we will publish details of meetings that TheStory.ie is involved in, included the date, time, duration, purpose and subject matter of the discussions. Previous access to information advocacy meetings are available in this spreadsheet.

We arrange and attend meetings in our spare time, with the sole motivation of serving the public interest for access to information rights. Of course, we *could* be in the pub instead. But we’d rather be acting on your behalf. We often do go to the pub afterwards though. Usually it’s Gavin who is in these meetings.

In somewhat unrelated news we sent an FOI to the same department seeking details of how FOI is implemented over the past two years, details of expenditure by the Department, the diary of the Secretary General of the Department Robert Watt, and other matters. This information was received on April 3 and in paper format. We will publish it as soon as possible, though the information obtained will help inform our views on how FOI policy is handled by public bodies.

The IBRC plan 2011-2020

Last year we wrote about an unredacted document we obtained that showed IBRC’s winddown plans up to 2020. Now that IBRC is in liquidation we are publishing the document in full, and much of it is still relevant in terms of the loanbook:



Commissioner decision on AIE search and retrieval fees

Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) specialist and campaigner Pat Swords was kind enough to share a recent decision of the Commissioner for Environmental Information with TheStory.ie The decision is an important one, and relates to how search and retrieval fees can be used (or not used) in relation to AIE requests (AIE was the method we used to get NAMA to be a public authority subject to AIE requests).

We were particularly interested by this paragraph:


So can any public authority charge search and retrieval for AIE requests from now on? It would certainly seem not – and would surely require new guidance to be issed to all public authorities into how they handle such requests.

The Commissioner points out in her decision that the AIE regulations (2007/2011) say that a public authority cannot charge citizens for inspecting environmental information in situ (at the premises of the authority, see Section 15 1) c) of the Regulations). She argues that if this is the case, then it would be inconsistent and unreasonable to ask citizens to pay a “search and retrieval” fee.

In other words just because the requester is remote from the premises, doesn’t mean their rights of access should be diminished by a fee being charged for search and retrieving information. Only fees for reproduction and so on (photocopying) could be charged.

This is the full decision with thanks to Pat:



NAMA vs OCEI costs via Twitter

Following the judgment on NAMA issued last week, Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty asked the Taoiseach not to pursue a Supreme Court appeal, as it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. Just afterwards we wondered how much the case had cost and since NAMA/NTMA are not subject to FOI, we did what anyone would do in this situation, we put in a request for a Parliamentary Question instead, via Twitter:

Doherty agreed to ask the question, and last night we got the response, again via Twitter.

We’re not sure if this is a first, but it’s a nice open way to get information.

McCreevy 1999 Cabinet documents

Mary Minihan in the Irish Times has recently been writing about Cabinet documents she obtained under Section 19 of the FOI Act. This little-used provision allows citizens to obtain Cabinet level documents and communications after 10 years has passed. She wrote the stories listed below and has been kind enough to share the documents involved with TheStory.ie.

McCreevy warned in 2000 of threat to economy if ‘boom is let rip’
Papers reveal political wrangling behind State’s boom-time giveaway budget
McCreevy had warned of public-private tensions



NAMA vs OCEI High Court judgment

The judgment of Colm MacEochaidh in full.

Media coverage:
The Journal – NAMA loses High Court appeal over environmental information requests
Broadsheet.ie – Unredacting NAMA
Irish Times – Nama loses information appeal
RTE – NAMA appeal over information requests dismissed



NAMA decision (update)

Update: The court has found in favour of the OCEI and dismissed NAMA’s appeal. We will publish a copy of the judgment as soon as we have it.

We are expecting a High Court ruling on the case of NAMA vs the Office of the Commissioner of the Environmental Information on the morning of February 27. We will update the blog once we know.

The case centres on the statutory interpretation of “and includes” in the definition of “public authority” in the Access to Information on the Environment Regulations (AIE) 2007. NAMA (and Anglo/IBRC) denied they were public authorities subject to the Regulations while the Commissioner ruled that they were. The case was then appealed to the High Court by NAMA and Anglo.

TheStory.ie first sent requests seeking information in February 2010.