Tag Archives: TheStory.ie

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Top 30 suppliers to receive money from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in 2013

Gavin Sheridan, of TheStory.ie, writes:

[Here] is €2,597,722,577 of State expenditure from 2013, obtained from 68 public bodies via the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It shows the total for each supplier to those 68 public bodies. (Note, there are duplicates where one supplier had a relationship with more than one public body). The data shows the top 5,000 suppliers by amount to those 68 public bodies.

We tried hard to obtain the full SQL database in the possession of the Department, but they resisted us all the way to the Information Commissioner, who found against us last year. They wouldn’t even release a breakdown per public body because they said it would be too complex (anyone who knows SQL knows that can’t be true).

Release: €2.6bn of State spending (TheStory.ie)

Gavin

Gavin Sheridan, of TheStory.ie

The FOI-inator Gavin Sheridan has been battling for five years to seek certain information in relation to NAMA.

Writing on thestory.ie last week, he explained:

“Back in February 2010, we sent a request to NAMA seeking certain information under the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations. NAMA had just been established. We sent a similar request to Anglo Irish Bank. Both rejected our requests on the basis that they did not see themselves as public authorities under those regulations. We disagreed.

“For 5 years the case has wound its way through the system, from a Commissioner ruling in September 2011 (which went in our favour), to High Court hearings in 2012 and two High Court judgments in early 2013 (the judge ruled against NAMA on both the substantive issue and on the issue of a stay, pending a Supreme Court appeal). We had to seek, and were granted, an expedited hearing after NAMA appealed both. There were almost two days of hearings in the Supreme Court in 2014, before five judges.”

“The issue to be decided, among others, is what the term “and includes” means in the Regulations, and whether NAMA/Anglo, by virtue of being listed in 3(1) under the definition of public authority at parts vi) and vii), are in fact public authorities.

“If the court rules as we believe it should, then NAMA becomes a public authority under AIE, and all bodies listed in parts i) to vii) of 3(1) of the Regulations become de facto public authorities (below), and we will finally have legal clarity.

(i) a Minister of the Government,

(ii) the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland,

(iii) a local authority for the purposes of the Local Government Act 2001 (No. 37 of 2001),

(iv) a harbour authority within the meaning of the Harbours Act 1946 (No. 9 of 1946),

(v) the Health Service Executive established under the Health Act 2004 (No. 42 of 2004),

(vi) a board or other body (but not including a company under the Companies Acts) established by or under statute,

(vii) a company under the Companies Acts, in which all the shares are held—

(I) by or on behalf of a Minister of the Government,

(II) by directors appointed by a Minister of the Government,

(III) by a board or other body within the meaning of paragraph (vi), or

(IV) by a company to which subparagraph (I) or (II) applies, having public administrative functions and responsibilities, and possessing environmental information;

Well, the judgment is in…

Fair play in fairness.

Read this morning’s judgment in full here

foi1foiTheStory.ie is a crowd-funded investigative website run by journalists Gavin Sheridan (who co-founded the site with Mark Coughlan) and Ken Foxe and lawyer Fred Logue that sources Freedom of Information documents.

It has obtained a mass of unseen data since it began four years ago, funded by public donations.

Gavin writes:

As time went on we developed new techniques for seeking data rather than paper, techniques to obtain large amounts of information with a single request, included billions of euro of previously undisclosed public expenditure. We have trained journalists in Ireland, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary and Spain.

However, proposed changes to the funding of FOI requests (including a raft of hidden charges) could spell their end.

Gavin adds:

We’ve had sight of new amendments to the FOI Bill 2013 proposed by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform [above].

We will be blunt: if passed, Freedom of Information is dead. TheStory.ie will, in all likelihood, cease all FOI requests. And we will not seek funding from the public to support an immoral, cynical, unjustified and probably illegal FOI fee regime.

We will not pay for information that the public already pays for. We will not support a system that perpetuates an outrageous infringement of citizen rights.

READ ON: Killing Freedom of Information in Ireland (Gavin Sheridan, TheStory.ie)