1743. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the number of FOI requests his Department, and each agency under his auspices, received in each year 2020 to 2025, and to date in 2026; the number that were refused on original decision; the number for which reviews were sought and the number of those reviews whereby the original decision was amended; the number for which subsequent appeals were submitted; the number of those appeals which resulted in an amendment to the original decision; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [61046/26]

My Department processes Freedom of Information (FOI) requests in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2014.

The table below outlines the number of FOI requests received by my Department in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 to date. It also provides, for each year, the number of refusals issued, the number of Internal Reviews received, the number of decisions amended (annulled or varied) following an Internal Review, the number of appeals made to the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC), and the number of decisions amended (annulled or varied) as a result of an OIC decision.

It should be noted that refusals, Internal Reviews, and OIC appeals may not be recorded in the same year as the original FOI request. For example, an FOI request received in late 2022 may have resulted in a refusal in 2023, an Internal Review decision in 2023, and an OIC appeal decision that was not issued until 2024.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act and the Model Publication Scheme, my Department publishes disclosure logs of non-personal FOI requests on its website on a quarterly basis. These logs contain details of non-personal FOI requests that have been responded to, including a description of each request and the decision made. My Department’s disclosure logs are available at: gov.ie - FOI Logs (www.gov.ie).

While my Department coordinates the annual collection of FOI statistics from bodies under its aegis for onward transmission to the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, which in turn provides statistics for all public bodies to the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC), it does not routinely maintain or collate the information requested in respect of bodies under its aegis.

Arrangements are in place across all bodies under the aegis of my Department to facilitate the direct provision of information to members of the Oireachtas. This enables queries to be addressed directly to the relevant bodies in a timely, efficient, and cost-effective manner. Members of the Oireachtas may contact these bodies directly by email, as outlined in the attached table.

The Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) publishes an Annual Report, which is available on its website at OIC - Annual reports and contains additional information and analysis relating to FOI requests.