Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 9 September 2021
475. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of freedom of information requests responded to by his Department in each of the years 2016 to 2020 and to date in 2021; the number of responses that included documents related to text messages and other phone message communications such as messages sent through an application (details supplied) in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42965/21]
View answerThe table below shows the total numbers of Freedom of Information requests responded to by my Department for the years listed.
|
Year |
Number of FOI requests answered |
|
2016 |
214 |
|
2017 |
262 |
|
2018 |
316 |
|
2019 |
364 |
|
2020 |
241 |
|
2021 to date |
206 |
The FOI Act covers information contained in both physical and electronic formats. That would include text messages and other phone message communications, including the particular application specified in this request. With the expansion in available forms of electronic communication, we have seen a pattern of increasing interest in specific forms of phone message communication in the FOI requests that my Department receives. We expect that this trend will continue. While, my Department does not currently track the form of the records released under the Act, we have conducted a manual search through our FOI files and found 17 records in the form of text messages or other phone message communications. These formed part of the 111 records released yesterday under section 15 (1) (f), which comprised the largest ever set of records released by the Department.
