Two cases concerning the release of records under Freedom of Information Act
THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY
The Church of Scientology looked for certain records in the Department of Foreign Affairs. There were a number of despatches from ambassadors about the church.
The department "decided that to disclose the existence or non-existence of records relating to the request could reasonably be expected to affect adversely the international relations of the State".
These records contained details "as reported by an Irish embassy, of a foreign government's views on the Scientology movement and of actions taken by that government concerning the movement".
Most "of the information contained in the records was already in the public domain". The department had not shown "that the release of the records could reasonably be expected to give rise to the adverse effects which it had identified in its submission and I directed that the records be released". The Department of Foreign Affairs "seems to feel that all diplomatic exchanges between ambassadors and department should be a class exemption", that they should be exempted regardless of content.
"We asked them to show what harm this would do [to release the information], because in a sense the records were quite innocuous."
In its response to the applicant, the department used a provision that it could "neither confirm nor deny" the records. In his ruling, the commissioner said that "at the very least, the department should have acknowledged the existence of records without necessarily disclosing the circumstances surrounding their creation".
The commissioner directed that the records be released. "We expect public bodies when they refuse records to justify their refusals and they have to do it strictly by criteria laid down in the Act".
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
The Information Commissioner upheld a decision by the Department of Agriculture to name the recipients and amounts of the top 10 payments for a variety of EU-funded agricultural schemes.
Mr Kevin Murphy, the commissioner, said it was similar to the case regarding the release of details of TDs' expenses, dealt with in last year's annual report. "We were talking about probably the 10 biggest farmers in the country and it was in their role as businesses rather than their personal lives" that the issue arose.
After consulting the recipients, the department had decided to release the information. Five of the 10 farmers appealed to the commissioner.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, there was a "public interest test". Farming grants were "public moneys" and "the balance shifts in favour of release" rather than privacy.
Wherever there is public money involved, "the taxpayer and citizen at large is entitled to see where public money is spent", Mr Murphy said.
The commissioner found that payments were intended to sustain the recipients' farming businesses. The payments did not represent the income of the individual recipients but were one source of the total gross income of the particular farming enterprise.
Public bodies "cannot reasonably be expected to treat information relating to the payment of public money to an individual as confidential unless the circumstances show that the information is of an intrinsically private nature".
He stated that the "release of information about significant payments by public bodies to business firms, sole traders or individuals should be the norm" unless the disclosure of "personal information and consequential intrusion on the privacy of the recipients would outweigh the benefits of openness and transparency".