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Make a freedom of information (FOI) request
From Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science
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You must make your request for information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2014 to the FOI Unit:
Information Access Unit
Department of Education
Marlborough Street
Dublin 1
D01 RC96
Your request must be in writing, and it should refer to the FOI Act. Please contact the unit above with any queries.
Request for Access to Records under the Freedom of Information Act 2014
Application form to make a Freedom of Information request
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Please note, since the establishment of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS), we have had a shared services arrangement with the Department of Education. The Department of Education will manage and coordinate your FOI request and the response will come from an officer in DFHERIS. This will have no effect on your ability to access departmental records under the FOI Act.
Make your request as specific as possible. This will help us to identify the information you’re requesting.
Where possible, please try to indicate the time period for which you want to access records. For example, 'records created between October 2012 and December 2012'. Also, if possible, try to specify the areas of the department that you believe are most relevant to your request.
If you need information in a particular form (for example, a photocopy or a computer disk), you should say this in your request.
There is no fee for making an FOI request, but you may need to pay charges for time and other costs to the department.
It’s very unlikely that we’ll charge you any fees for personal records, except where you request a large number of records.
Requests for personal information include information relating to your children or relating to deceased people. In these cases, we’ll need to verify your information in advance.
If you’re making a non-personal request, we may charge you for the time spent finding records and for any reproduction costs paid by the department.
We would only charge you where the total cost is over €100. This minimum is equivalent to 5 free hours. Where the time needed goes over the minimum, we will charge you €20 per hour for the full amount of time spent.
There’s generally a maximum of €500 on these fees. Where the cost of searching, retrieval and copying is more than €700, we might refuse your request, unless you narrow the scope of your request.
| Search and retrieval | €20 per hour |
| Copying charges | Photocopy per sheet €0.04 |
| CD-ROM | €10 |
| Radiograph | €6 |
- Internal review fee: €30 (€10 for medical card holders)
- Appeal to the Information Commissioner: €50 (€15 for medical card holders)
We will acknowledge a request for records within 2 weeks and, in most cases, respond to it within 4 weeks. A ‘week’ means 5 consecutive weekdays, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
If a third party is involved, there may be another three weeks before we give you a response.
We’re required to follow these timelines, under the FOI Act.
The following records come within the scope of the FOI Act:
- all records relating to personal information held by the department, regardless of when they were created
- all other records created from the start of the FOI Act on 21 April 1998
- any records necessary to understand a current record, even if created before 21 April 1998
- personnel records of serving staff created from 21 April 1998, and those created before that date, which were used or proposed to be used in a way that negatively affects or may affect the person involved
It will sometimes be necessary for us to exempt certain types of information from release, to allow government business to be properly conducted. These circumstances are set out in the FOI Act.
Some of the key exemptions are records about:
- government meetings
- law enforcement and security
- confidential and commercially-sensitive information
- personal information (other than information about the person making the request)
If you’re unhappy with the department's response to your request, you can request for a more senior department staff member to re-examine the decision. You should send your application for a review to foi@dfheris.gov.ie or by post to:
Information Access Unit
Department of Education
Marlborough Street
Dublin 1
D01 RC96
If your request was non-personal, you should include a fee of €30, or a reduced fee of €10 if you’re a medical card holder.
If you’re still unhappy with the decision after the review, you have the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner. To do this, send an application with a fee of €50 (or €15 if you’re a medical card holder) to:
Office of the Information Commissioner
6 Earlsfort Terrace
Dublin 2
D02 W773
If you require any help, the staff of the FOI Unit will be happy to assist you.
The unit is also available to help people with a disability to exercise their rights under the FOI Act. For example:
- accepting oral requests from requesters who are unable to read, print and or write due to their disability
- enabling the requester to inspect or have records explained to him or her
The unit can be contacted at foi@dfheris.gov.ie .
The FOI Act says that, from 21 April 1998, every person has the right to:
- access official records held by government departments or other public bodies listed in the act
- have personal information held on them corrected or updated where this information is incomplete, incorrect or misleading
- be given reasons for decisions taken by public bodies that affect them
These rights mean that people can seek access to personal information held on them, no matter when the information was created, and to other records created after 21 April 1998.
The revised 2014 FOI Act extended these rights to a range of other public bodies, including bodies that get funding from the state and other semi-state bodies.
The act requires public bodies to respond to requests from the public for information they hold.
The department has prepared an FOI publication scheme , which contains a range of information about the department and its work.
Every 3 months, the department publishes a list (or log) of non-personal FOI requests for which we issued records.
This FOI log is one of several ways to promote transparency through regularly publishing information.
You can ask for more information by emailing the FOI Unit: foi@dfheris.gov.ie .
If you would like to make a request for information under data protection legislation, please see our subject access request page.