Another 137 public bodies and groups were brought within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act last night under the terms of a regulation approved by the Oireachtas Committee on Finance. The Act now covers more than 500 bodies.
Proposing the extension of the Act, the Minister of State Noel Treacy told the committee that when it was introduced in 1998 it covered 67 bodies but since then there had been 12 additions to the list.
The Minister said other bodies would be included in the Act in future, including the Data Protection Commission and the Labour Court.
However, he said the Government would not be including some of the bodies referred to by the information commissioner, Emily O'Reilly, in her recent annual report, such as the Garda Síochána, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and Refugee Appeals Tribunal and the Residential Institutions Redress Board.
Mr Treacy said that a number of concerns were raised by the Department of Justice about extending the Freedom of Information Act to the refugee process.
"Following consideration of these matters, the Government decided not to extend FoI to these bodies for the foreseeable future," he added.
He said the Act would not be extended to the Residential Institutions Redress Board due to the highly confidential nature of its work.
The new bodies now covered by the Act are listed below.