RECENT PROBLEMS which arose with the Refugee Appeals Tribunal might have surfaced and have been dealt with "much earlier" if that body had been subject to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, the Information Commissioner said yesterday.
Emily O'Reilly added that there was a "particular urgency" about the need to have public agencies in areas of policing, asylum and immigration brought under the FOI Act.
She called for a "thorough review" of our FOI legislation, and suggested that if FOI was recognised by the Constitution, it was "very unlikely that, 10 years after its introduction, some critical areas of government would remain out of bounds, FOI-wise, to the public".
"What we seem to be facing is a scenario in which the State is encroaching significantly on the privacy and human rights of members of the public [including immigrants] while at the same time, those organs of the State most active in these areas are managing to evade public scrutiny of their actions," she said in her keynote speech.
"I have frequently suggested that we need an honest debate about the future of FOI in Ireland.
"Honesty, therefore, requires that I ask whether it is the case that the Department of Justice is blocking the opening up of policing and immigration matters to the scrutiny of FOI; and if this is indeed the case, then perhaps we might be told why."
She noted that bodies such as the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, An Garda Síochána, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and local Vocational Education Committees are currently not subject to FOI legislation.
The Department of Finance also appears to have decided against opening up the "aliens-naturalisation" area to her scrutiny in her role as Ombudsman, under planned amendments to the legislation, Ms O'Reilly said.
Similarly, the Government's Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill 2008 proposed "the effective exclusion of the areas of refugees and immigration from the scope of the FOI Act," she said.
At the conference, Scottish information commissioner Kevin Dunnion outlined how it had been possible to apply the FOI Act to the police force in that country.
He said there were exemptions for police but sometimes he overruled decisions not to release information. This included granting a request for a list of registered sex offenders living in particular areas, without stepping over the "threshold of identification".