Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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57. To ask the Minister for Finance the number of freedom of information requests, in tabular form, received by his Department in 2015 to date; the number of these where the period of consideration was completed within four weeks of the receipt of the request; was extended by up to four weeks because the necessary resources to complete the request within the original time frame were not available. [36748/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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As of 16th October, 2015 the number of freedom of information requests received by my Department was 354. My Department's electronic system which records receipt and completion of freedom of information requests does not record whether the FOI request was completed within the original 20 working days or whether a further 20 day extension was required. However I can say that 82 per cent of freedom of information requests had response times within the requisite time limits.  

I will be satisfied when the response time reaches 100% and in light of this situation, I have asked my Secretary General to prioritise clearance of the current backlog of requests. I am informed by my Secretary General that in addition to the team of people working almost full-time on these FoI requests, banking inquiry and Commission of Investigation requests, further full-time resources have been retained to work exclusively on the outstanding FoI requests including 8 additional Decision Makers being directed to focus on the current backlog, which will be cleared as soon as practicable.