At a Cabinet Subcommittee on Covid-19 are from left: Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Health Simon Harris and Chief Medical Officer of the HSE Dr Tony Holohan; Ken Foxe
The Department of Health has refused to release copies of briefings and submissions for Minister Simon Harris relating to the spread of coronavirus.
The Department has said “the public interest would be best served by refusal of these records at this time”.
Separately, the HSE is also refusing to release a copy of the “draft unsigned agreement” between themselves and the operators of private hospitals.
Ken Foxe writes:
Access to that record has been refused under five different sections of the FOI Act: Section 29 on deliberations, Section 30 on functions and negotiations, Section 31, Section 35 on information obtained in confidence, and Section 36 on commercial sensitivity:
Section 29 has been invoked on the basis that the agreement is still under deliberation. Release of it could “impact negatively on the integrity” of that:
Section 30 has been invoked because the record is the subject of ongoing negotiations. Release of the record could be expected to disclose negotiating positions:
Section 35 and 36 have been invoked because the record contains “confidential information” and because they consider it to be commercially sensitive:
The HSE said that the public interest would not be served by release of the record. They said it would place them at a disadvantage in “its efforts to maximise its use of public funds and its capacity in response to the Covid-19 public health emergency”
For good measure, they also invoked Section 31 saying agreement was subject of confidential communications for the purposes of obtaining legal advice. They believe the record is “subject to legal professional privilege”. No public interest test is required for this exemption:
We suggested that the Dept/HSE could simply publish these records to their websites and we would be happy to withdraw our requests. That hasn’t happened and both will now go for internal review.
Good times.
Ken Foxe has done good work on FOI but sometimes material shouldn’t be released and even asking for it can be damaging. Civil servants in the department of Health had to stop their usual work and start doing searches and drafting long schedules of documents just for Ken. Its hardly the best use of their time right now. There’s always a balance to be made between accountability and effectiveness. Maybe the balance shifts a little towards effectiveness during a public crisis?
On the other hand, it’s in times of a crisis like these that transparency matters more than ever. The public has a right to know the basis upon which these policy decisions, which have far-reaching consequences, are being made. A lack of transparency is further eroding an already shaky social contract between citizens and state.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/the-irish-times-view-on-the-coronavirus-response-the-case-for-transparency-1.4237484
Why shouldn’t it be released?
We are a democracy apparently.
We elect politicians to spend our taxes, are you not interested in how your tax gets spent? Who decides how its spent? Who helps them decide how it gets spent?
So, it’s not ‘just for Ken’ -its for all of us. The more you think like this the better is is for Govt and Civil servants as they don’t have to be answerable any more. As for ‘best use of time’ – maybe the Govt could have spent time better in ‘negotiating’ with the private hospitals – a subject we know little about because here are no facts, why are there no facts? Well, take a read of your post…
Better to have the Civil Servants trawling records now, than them and others trawling them in a few years when there’s an enquiry, and when documents might, ahem, get mislaid.
The responses have been fairly predictable from people largely with little or no knowledge of government. The fact is though, there are finite resources and when you get people chasing up FOI requests (they are very labour intensive for junior, middle and senior staff), you divert them from more urgent and critical functions.
Oh, sorry. I didn’t know I was not to question this, not without knowledge of the inner workings of Govt. Jeez I am so stupid. Imagine getting people to provide answers for the workings of the Dept they work in, finite resources and all that. Silly me. And diverting them from more urgent and critical functions. Oh my.
Its true, I know little about the government but what little I do know makes me very interested in why they avoid giving detail. Sorry I feel like that, its just that the Govt trained me to think that way just by behaving like you detailed.
Now Joe Small – really, take yourself off by the hand there and stop being a pedant. We are all entitled to know this and if it takes time or resources then tough, get faster, better and more efficient at finding out the answers. I really can’t believe you wrote that in 2020. Please tell me you are 16 and YFG?
They should’ve hired a few more siblings…
There was an issue a few years ago with the CAB or Revenue (I think) – where people that were being investigated (and their friends) kept sending in a deluge of FOI requests that diverted the staff from their day job of investigation. This successfully delayed the investigation for a few years.
We asked them to publish the briefings/submissions on a rolling basis to their website with a reasonable time lag of say a month. This has already been done by NPHET with minutes of their meetings, and for correspondence between the HSE and the Dept of Health. The Department didn’t bother to create a schedule of records so that point doesn’t arise. I withdrew all FOI requests and internal reviews I had with DoH other than this one. Some of them long predated Covid-19 and hadn’t been answered properly. I also recommended to people that they think strongly about submitting requests to DoH/HSE/hospitals etc during this time. Had the government wanted to suspend FOI in the middle of this public health crisis, they would have done so. Minister Simon Harris said there would be absolute transparency about decision making during Covid-19. What will inevitably cause additional work is failure to publish records as a matter of course and poor FOI decisions.
Ken,
That seems quite reasonable. I would never suggest D/Health or HSE is a bastion of transparency during the best of times but many civil servants in high-pressure, under-resources sections have been frustrated by pointless FOI requests sucking precious resources at key times. I bet many civil servants would be fine with more transparency if they could just find someone else to process the requests!
if
“draft unsigned agreement”
isn’t enough to convene the Dáil
particularly its context – our healthcare administration
Then I’m not sure we deserve any better from them
So 115 million per month
with a 44(?) million booking deposit
Was an unsigned agreement, ah lads,
and Draft anything is just organised notes
And guess what – its to be reviewed next week,
Expect an extension – and a few quid off, just to make it look like they’re playing hard ball and being tough with the older boys
Imagine getting a deposit of over forty million on what could be scribbled on the back of a beer mat
NCH
Rural Broadband
FFS Paschal Donohoe has some explaining to do when he still insists the likes of me in the Credit Union and wider Cooperative Movement are riskier than his pals in the banks, and big business’
in fact the entire Fine Gael membership, Chorus of Lobbyists, Advisers, Enablers, and Liggers have some neck in fairness
“draft unsigned agreement”
WTF
All that’s left to say is
SUCKERS!
Agreed x 1000%
Is there a rule somewhere that ministers for health- worldwide- must look as unhealthy as possible?
And since when was haircuts legal?
I think Simon looks great. James Reilly, point taken.
None of the trio above are practicing social-distancing. It has to be a recent picture by looking at Harris’ hair.
Noel, that pic is from late last year.