Ms Emily O'Reilly:

No, it is not acceptable. In the early days, many of the reviews we got to deal with were fairly straightforward and we made a significant number of seminal decisions. Much of the type of stuff that would have come to us previously is now dealt with by the public body when the application is first made. Therefore, almost by definition, the appeals we get now relate to quite complex matters. For example, one of the issues we are dealing with now - under access to environmental information - is whether NAMA is a public authority or not under the terms of access to environmental legislation. That might seem like a simple matter, but it is not. The issue is now in the High Court, where NAMA is challenging my ruling that it is a public authority.

However, I am not here to make excuses for us. Over the past year or so we have been trying to refine our processes. We have had huge success in the Ombudsman's office and we are now getting through 30% more complaints than we did. We achieved this through major restructuring, but we realise that no amount of restructuring we can do within the Office of the Information Commissioner will help significantly to speed things up. Therefore, last week we wrote to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform requesting additional staff to cope with FOI requests, particularly in view of the fact that new bodies are coming in.