Sharp fall in FoI requests since fees introduced

Usage of the Freedom of Information Act has more than halved since fees for requests under the legislation were introduced by the Minister for Finance last July, according to the Information Commissioner, Ms Emily O'Reilly.

Publishing a report yesterday on the impact of the introduction of the fees, Ms O'Reilly said the media - "a key element of an open and properly functioning democracy" - were now less likely to use the Act.

Requests for non-personal information had declined by 75 per cent. Requests from journalists fell by 83 per cent, and "still continues to decline".

The figures were based on a comparison of FoI requests made in the first quarter of 2003 to those made in the first quarter of 2004, thereby eliminating the main impact of a surge in requests in the first half of last year from former residents of industrial and reformatory schools seeking access to personal information.

When such people were included, the total number of requests to public bodies rose to 18,443 last year, an increase of 7 per cent on 2002.

Speaking on the adjusted figures, the Commissioner called for a review of the scale and structure of charges, noting "the decline in usage of the Act has gone far beyond what the Government had intended when it decided to introduce fees".

Of seven jurisdictions studied by the Commissioner, including several in the UK and Australia, only three imposed an application fee for FoI requests. None charged for internal review, and only one (Ontario) charged for an application to the Information Commissioner's Office - at a fee of less than half the Irish one.

Ms O'Reilly said Ireland was "substantially out of line with practice abroad" on fees for reviews of decisions, and she called for a "reappraisal" of the €150 charge that applied to reviews carried out by her office.

In addition, she said consideration should be given to waiving fees and charges where the release of records would be in the public interest, or of benefit to the public at large.

Bearing in mind the costs to applicants, she said, public bodies should ensure that, where possible, information was released without obliging requesters to seek it under the Act.

Moreover, "the Department of Finance should ensure that all potential users of the Act are aware of the circumstances in which fees are chargeable and the circumstances in which fees may be reduced or waived and of the methods available to keep request costs at a minimum".

Opposition parties backed the Commissioner's call for a review of fees.

Fine Gael's finance spokesman Mr Richard Bruton said the Government "rammed" the charges through the Oireachtas in an arrogant manner and despite his party's opposition. Labour's finance spokeswoman, Ms Joan Burton, said the decline in usage "is exactly what Fianna Fáil and the PDs intended" when they introduced the charges.

The report was published along with the Commissioner's 2003 annual report - Ms O'Reilly's first since her appointment in June 2003.

Some 324 formal decisions were made last year, 83 per cent of them affirming the relevant decision of the public body in each case.

Among the appeals rejected was that against RTÉ for refusing information on an unnamed RTÉ employee and the competition from which he was appointed. In her review, the Commissioner discovered that the requester had made 51 applications for review to her office, with almost all of the requests relating to the same RTÉ employee. "Taking all this into consideration, I concluded that RTÉ was justified in its decision to refuse to grant the requests on the ground that they were 'frivolous or vexatious'."

In another case, a person who requested information from the Department of Justice on an application for citizenship was told that a file relating to the applicant had gone missing. Within four working days of the Commissioner requesting a follow-up search, the file had been found.