Department of Justice deals with average of two FOI requests per day

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has responded to more than 3,750 Freedom of Information requests over the past five years.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said his Department had issued 3,758 decisions in response to 3,790 requests in 2013-17.

780 decisions were issued last year in response to 796 requests, up from 591 decisions and 583 requests in 2016.

Mr Flanagan said he couldn’t report the time spent processing requests or the number that ran beyond deadline as “those statistics are not readily available from the Department’s current tracking system”.

However, he added: “The Department is in the process of introducing a new electronic FOI processing system during 2018, which will make it possible to provide more detailed processing statistics in the future.”