The income from new Freedom of Information fees is not meeting the costs of collecting them, the Information Commissioner said today.
Ms Emily O'Reilly told the Dáil Finance Sub-Committee that the €15,000 spent on collecting the fees had not been fully recouped.
She said she would be disappointed if some charges under the act, which were introduced by Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, were not reduced.
Requests for information under the FOI Act now cost €15, an internal review costs €75 and an appeal to the Office of the Information Commissioner costs €150.
Ms O'Reilly said: "I should point out that Ireland is very much in the minority in charging fees for internal review and for an appeal to the Information Commissioner. In eight comparable jurisdictions looked at as part of the investigation, Ireland proved to be the only country which charges for internal review and is one of just two jurisdictions that charges for an appeal to the Information Commissioner."
Since the charges were introduced the number of appeals to the Office of the Information Commissioner has dropped by 50 per cent. Ms O'Reilly said that if the charges for an appeal to her office were not reduced, it would endanger the operation of the act. "My role is to monitor how public bodies are implementing the act. If we don't get the appeals, we can't do that," she said.
Ms O'Reilly was appearing before the Finance Sub Committee to discuss her annual report and the effects of the FOI Amendment Act on the number of requests.
The chairman of the Finance Sub Committee, Fianna Fáil TD Mr Sean Fleming said the charges had imposed a massive financial burden on the government body.
"This committee would have no difficulty in saying the collection of these fees was a retrograde step," he said.
Between the first quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004 the number of FOI requests by journalists fell by 83 per cent and there was also a sharp decline in requests from other sectors. The number of requests by businesses declined by 1,000 in the same period.
Labour TD Joan Burton asked what the FOI officers in the 400 bodies covered in the act were now doing. "I do sometimes wonder about that myself - in bodies that are receiving little applications," said Ms O'Reilly.
The high level group which recommended changes to the FOI Act last year said one of the reasons for doing so was the number of vexatious requests.
Ms O'Reilly said this was undoubtedly a factor but only in a small number of cases. "There is no empirical evidence to show they are there on a wide scale. If the decline in requests continues, it will show a drop of 3,000 requests. I think it would be stretching it to say they were all vexatious."
PA
