No records exist of a year-long involvement by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development in a fraud investigation, it emerged yesterday.
Some Department officials remained convinced the records existed even after they were told they did not, a report published by the Information Commissioner says.
But Mr Kevin Murphy says in the report that he now accepts Department assurances that there are no records. However, he told an Oireachtas committee that he would be "very concerned" if the situation uncovered at the Department was widespread.
The case came to light when his office picked a small number of files at random to assess the Department's compliance with the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.
They were preparing a report, published yesterday, on compliance by public bodies with the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr Murphy's office discovered that the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development had received a request for records relating to an investigation into a suspected serious fraud by a farmer. The investigation had been carried out by a regional office and by the Department's Special Investigation Unit (SIU) in Dublin.
When an official in the regional office, who was handling the FOI request, was told the SIU had no records on the investigation he put a note in the FOI file which "indicated that he remained convinced that papers existed in the SIU which had not been given to him".
"It appeared that the FOI unit in the Department also believed that the SIU may have held records relating to the FOI request," the report says.
Mr Murphy wrote in his report that, while he accepted the records did not exist, "the fact that the SIU could be involved in such a serious matter for a period of almost one year without the creation, by the Department, of a single record, which accurately records the SIU's involvement in the case, raises questions in my mind about the Department's record-keeping practices".
Responding to questions from Senator John Dardis, he told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Strategic Management Initiative yesterday that he had no evidence the practice was widespread but "I have considered it as something we need to keep an eye on".
His report is also critical of the Departments of Education and Science and Health and Children. When he picked FOI requests at random from the Department of Health and Children, he found three in which no decision had been issued. In one case, an appeal received by the Department in March 2000 had still not been decided on a year later.
Many of the problems at the Department of Education and Science arise from handling requests from people sent as children to reformatories and industrial schools. In all there are 230,000 separate documents in this category.
A special report seeking regulations on medical records may be published by the committee, its chairman, Mr Dick Roche TD, announced at the meeting. Last week Mr Murphy criticised poor medical record-keeping in hospitals.
The full text of the Freedom Of Information report is available at the Irish Times website: www.ireland.com