Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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62. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if the Office of the Information Commissioner is subject to budgetary constraints when engaging in litigation whether as an applicant, defendant or notice party. [22927/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The Office of the Information Commissioner is funded through Vote 19 – the Office of the Ombudsman. Vote 19 provides for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Ombudsman, the Office of the Commission for Public Service Appointments, the Standards in Public Office Commission, the Office of the Information Commissioner and the Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information.

The funding allocated to the Vote each year is based on agreed estimates of the salaries and expenses of the various component Offices. While the organisation has a certain amount of discretion in how it allocates that funding between the Offices and in how it assigns staff to the Offices depending on levels of demand, it must operate within the constraints of the funding allocated.

Each Office within the Vote must also operate within the constraints of the funding allocated each year in so far as possible. A certain amount of funding is allocated for legal expenditure for the Office of the Information Commissioner based on an estimate of the expenditure likely to arise. However, the nature of litigation is such that it is very difficult to predict, with any real degree of accuracy, the likely amount of expenditure on legal fees in any given year. Such expenditure is generally beyond the control of the Office in so far as the relevant statutes provide for the right of appeal to the courts.