Last week the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
announced a full public consultation of the Freedom of Information
Act 2014 (the "FOI Act"), which will
inform the direction of travel for FOI policy into the future.
Having carried out a survey that closed in December 2021, the
Department has prepared a consultation paper that seeks responses
from the public on themes grouped into two areas: structural issues
and incremental reform.
One of the structural issues themes that has been identified for
consultation is streamlining of regimes. Some of the
responses at the scoping stage identified that the variety of
access mechanisms may give rise to "regulatory
arbitrage" or "forum shopping", which
can often involve public bodies being required to process multiple
requests under different frameworks. By their nature, slightly
different outcomes may arise out of requests under different legal
rules.
