Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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638. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of freedom of information requests responded to by her Department in each of the years 2016 to 2020 and to date in 2021; the number of responses that included documents related to text messages and other phone message communications such as messages sent through an application (details supplied) in tabular form; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42961/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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My Department reports annually to both the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Office of the Information Commissioner on Freedom of Information activity. The Office of the Information Commissioner publish this data in its annual report and the annual reports up to 2020 are available on the OIC’s website.

The following table provides the total number of requests received and processed by my Department for the years 2016 through to 2021.

As to the number of responses that include documents related to phone message communications, the eFOI system does not allow for the bulk examination of the thousands of records released under the FOI Act.

My Department routinely publishes FOI Disclosure Logs containing summary information on non-personal FOI requests processed and these logs can be accessed via our website.