The Information Commissioner, Emily O'Reilly, has urged the Health Service Executive (HSE) to do "all in its power" to ensure that pre-school inspection reports are made available to the public as soon as possible.
Her comments come after the HSE confirmed that the reports are unlikely to be made fully available online to the public before the start of next year at earliest.
Once published, they will not detail what HSE inspectors saw during visits to pre-school facilities conducted during previous years. Instead, they will relate to visits conducted using a new standardised reporting format, which is expected to be finalised by the end of this year.
Following the publication by The Irish Times of the results of hundreds of inspections of institutions earlier this year, the HSE said it intended to make the results of its inspections more publicly available. At that time, the reports revealed that the vast majority of premises inspected were in breach of creche regulations. Among the issues of concern were overcrowding, dirty or unsafe premises and inadequate supervision of children.
Commenting on the HSE's progress on the publication of both creche and nursing home reports, Ms O'Reilly said there was clearly a "huge public demand for information of this kind to be made available". She said it was "particularly important" that where public bodies have supervisory or regulatory functions that the public should be as informed as early as possible as to what is being done on its behalf.
"I would hope the HSE will do all in its power to meet this demand before very much longer," she added.