Access to Information Updates
This is the report of the Ugandan Auditor General into the Office of the Ugandan Prime Minister. Ireland has suspended aid to Uganda in light of the scandal around an alleged fraud, reported to involve €12 million in aid last year from four countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Ireland.
Part of an ongoing process. These are the Cabinet briefing papers for then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for June and July 2002. It covers issues such as FOI reform, Nice 2 and the IFI.
In relation to the benchmarking process in 2002, I thought this particular passage particularly interesting, as to how governments try to manage the message:
And in relation to the Sheedy Affair:
And in relation to proposed FOI reform, a subject this blog is focussed on:
Here are the notes in full:
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?
As part of an ongoing process. This is the appointments diary of Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin for 2011.
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:
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.
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:
Part of an ongoing process. These are the assets registries for HSE Midlands for the years 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. They cover buildings, vehicles, lands, computers and general equipment owned by the HSE.
Assets Registry 2007
Assets Registry 2008
Assets Registry 2009
Assets Registry 2010
It’s been an interesting week. There have been several articles about those ECB letters, and this blog has received a fair bit of traffic from various sources. So it’s worth going back over what has happened.
To start chronologically, it’s worth mentioning that Ireland has not been the only country getting letters of this nature from the ECB.
On September 29 last year, Mario Sensini writing in the Italian newspaper Corriere published the contents of a leaked August 5 letter sent to the Italian government by the ECB. The letter bares a striking resemblance to the purported contents of our own November 2010 letter.
The following December I sent a request to the ECB seeking access to “any and all communications from the ECB addressed to the Irish Finance Minister (or his direct office) in the month of November 2010”. On January 9, Pierre van der Haegan and Roman Schremser from the ECB sent a reply stating that two letters existed from November 2010, dated November 18 and November 19. They granted full access to the November 18 letter but refused access to the November 19 letter. I then appealed this to internal review at the ECB.
On February 8 I received a reply to my internal review from ECB president Mario Draghi. He stated that the Executive Board had thoroughly considered my request but they had again decided to refuse access to the November 19 letter. Myself and Tom Lyons wrote an article in the Sunday Independent on February 12, 2012, outlining the contents of Draghi’s letter. In both cases, in the original refusal and in the second refusal, no mention was made to any other letter from November 2010.
I, along with some other journalists, also sought any letters from the other side of the equation – the Irish Department of Finance. No reference is made in the schedule of documents to a communication in the week ending November 14. I appealed the refusal by the Department to release the letters to the Irish Information Commissioner in June. And there the matter has rested since – until recent weeks.
In a matter that appears to have some similarity to the Irish letter, on July 19 2012 the European Ombudsman made a decision on a request by a Spanish lawyer in relation to a letter sent by the ECB to the Spanish government. The lawyer sought a copy of the letter because he wanted to know if the ECB had sought an amendment to the Spanish constitution. The lawyer was refused access by the Ombudsman, “however, with the consent of the ECB President, he confirmed to the complainant that the letter did not suggest any amendments to the Spanish Constitution. The lawyer was satisfied with this outcome”.
Then on August 17, Karl Whelan pointed to an odd discrepency in an article in Forbes. He wondered why the ECB referred to a letter dated November 19, as per my ECB request, yet Brian Lenihan had always referred to receiving a letter on or around November 12. The week difference is important. Among other points, he asked “Did the ECB communicate with Brian Lenihan on November 12, 2010? If so, why was this letter not referred to in response to Mr. Sheridan’s request?”
On August 22, Minister Pat Rabbitte appeared on Tonight with Vincent Browne. Colm McCarthy speaking on the show said that reference to a letter of November 19 was “probably an error” on the part of the ECB and that they had likely got their dates wrong. Pat Rabbitte said “the ECB strong armed the Irish government into taking on board effectively private banking debt” but that he “hadn’t heard about the letter Colm is talking about”.
But then on August 26 Daniel McConnell writing in the Sunday Independent, quoted Finance Minister Michael Noonan as saying the bailout letter should be released. The issue of the letter was now back firmly onto the news agenda. Several articles appeared in print over the following days talking about the letter, and it’s possible release to any banking inquiry.
On September 1, Stephen Collins writing in a front page Irish Times story, wrote that his paper had sight of the letters. He wrote:
Three critical letters were dispatched by Mr Trichet to Mr Lenihan in the run-up to the bailout.
They were sent on October 15th, November 4th and November 19th, 2010. It also appears likely that an email or fax reinforcing the message was sent to Mr Lenihan on November 12th, prompting his conversation with Mr Trichet.
He further says:
On November 4th, Mr Trichet wrote another letter to Mr Lenihan. He repeated many of the points made in the earlier letter about the massive exposure of the ECB to Irish bank debt.
However the article did not quote from any of the letters, nor were the contents of the letters released by the Irish Times.
Given that Mr Collins has had sight of the letters, then what of the ECB’s position that there were only two communications in November, and not four (including the Nov 18 letter I did receive) as Mr Collins says? Is Colm McCarthy right, did the ECB just make a mistake? And what of a purported fax communication on November 12? What of the communication of November 4, that the ECB did not refer to in their communications with me?
To try and get to the bottom of this I have submitted a followup request to the ECB seeking further information on any other letters over a broader timeframe. I have also submitted a request about my original request and how it was handled by the ECB (also known as a meta-FOI). Let’s see what happens.
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: