The Freedom of Information legislation establishes three statutory rights:
- A legal right for each person to access information held by public bodies.
- A legal right for each person to have official information relating to him or her amended where it is incomplete, incorrect or misleading.
- A legal right to obtain reasons for decisions affecting oneself.
Introduction of Fees
A new Act, the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Act, was introduced in 2003. This saw the introduction of up-front fees. For applications relating to non-personal information, an application fee of €15 must accompany the request, or a charge of €10 for medical card holders.
Nature of Requests
Cork County Council received a total of 162 requests in 2009, of which 10 were for personal information and 152 were for non-personal information.
Of the 162 requests received, 115 were granted or part-granted, 43 refused, 4 were withdrawn and handled outside FOI and no cases were carried forward to 2010.
Three applications were made for Internal Reviews and three applications were made to the Office of the Information Commissioner.
