A Corporate Body and TUSLA: Child and Family Agency

During the course of this review, the applicant's solicitors were offered the opportunity to make submissions on the question of whether the records at issue pre-date the commencement of the FOI Act. The solicitors indicated that they did not have instructions to lodge a further submission. I therefore consider that this review should be brought to a conclusion by way of formal decision. In conducting this review I have had regard to the correspondence between the applicant's solicitors and TUSLA, and to correspondence between this Office and both the applicant's solicitors and TUSLA.

This review is solely concerned with the question of whether TUSLA was justified in its decision to refuse access to records held by it that were given to the state in 1961 on the closure of a specified facility on the ground that the records at issue were created before the date on which the FOI Act took effect in relation to records held by TUSLA, i.e. before 21 April 1998.

The applicant's solicitors, in their application to this Office, confirmed that "the [facility] closed in 1961 and the records/information was handed over by our clients ... at that time". Moreover, TUSLA has confirmed that it now holds the records sought. Therefore, there is no dispute but that the records were created in 1961 or earlier.

Section 11(4) of the FOI Act provides for a right of access to records held by FOI bodies that were created on or after the effective date. As TUSLA was a public body for the purposes of the FOI Acts 1997 & 2003, the effective date is 21 April 1998. Section 11(5) confers a right of access to records created before 21 April 1998 where such access is necessary or expedient to understand records created after that date, or where the records relate to personal information about the requester.

In this case, the records at issue cannot constitute the personal information of the requester, as the applicant is a corporate body. Furthermore, the applicant has not argued that access to the records sought is necessary or expedient in order to understand records created after 21 April 1998, despite having been offered the opportunity to do so. Accordingly, I find that section 11(5) does not apply.