Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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108. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the number of freedom of information requests being processed by his Department; the number that have had the deadline for reply extended; the number at least one week, two weeks. one month and over one month overdue, respectively; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19346/20]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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My Department has processed 138 Freedom of Information requests to date in 2020, 27 of which were carried forward from 2019.  84 have been answered within the statutory deadline and 26 recent requests are still under active consideration.  A number of requests were also transferred to other FOI bodies, withdrawn or answered outside of the Freedom of Information process. Section 14 of the Freedom of information Act 2014, provides for an extension of up to four weeks for consideration of a request where the request either relates to a large number of records, or where there are a number of other requests relating to the same records.  To date in 2020, 14 such extensions have been applied.

4 requests were answered outside of the statutory 4 week timeline without Section 14 being applied.  The details are set out below.  2 requests remain to be answered and any decision will issue outside of the 4 week statutory deadline.  It should be noted that  the COVID-19 pandemic impacted on the processing of requests with limited access to records where offices were closed.

- 2 within 1 week

- 1 within 2 weeks

- 1 within 8 weeks