Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 23 June 2004
12 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Minister for Finance the progress made to date to clear the backlog of appeals in the Office of the Information Commissioner; the number of appeals outstanding at the latest date for which figures are available; and the average time taken to hear an appeal. [18608/04]
View answerOn 18 June the 2003 annual report of the Office of the Information Commissioner was published. It contained a comprehensive statistical analysis of FOI requests and the number of applications for reviews of FOI decisions.
The office completed 728 reviews during 2003 compared with just 534 in 2002, an increase of 36% year on year. A total of 886 reviews were received in 2003 and 434 were completed during the year. Of those completed 256 or 59% were completed within the four month deadline. A further 294 received before 2003 were also completed. Since the beginning of 2003 there was progress in reducing the backlog. At 21 June the number of outstanding reviews was reduced to 685.
The office makes every effort to ensure that the majority of reviews are completed within the deadline, the Information Commissioner stated that some reviews can involve complex issues or a large number of records and take considerably longer than the proscribed four months to conclude. At present figures are not available on the average time taken to conclude reviews. I hope an average time to conclude a review would have limited value given the wide variety of types of reviews and the varying degrees of complexity in each case.
