Mr and Mrs Z and TUSLA

• Judge: Stephen Rafferty, Senior Investigator
• Judgment Date: 29 July 2015
• Case Outcome: The Senior Investigator varied TUSLA's decision. He found it was justified in its decision to redact certain information from the records released to the applicants under section 28 of the Act. However, he found that it was not justified in its decision to refuse access to further relevant records under section 10(1)(a) of the Act. He annulled the decision of TUSLA and directed that a fresh decision making process be undertaken in respect of the relevant records discovered during the course of this review.
• Record Number: 150039
• Court: Information Commission
• Respondent: TUSLA

Whether TUSLA was justified in its decision to redact certain information from records released to the applicants under section 28 of the Act and whether it was justified in its decision to refuse access to further relevant records under section 10(1)(a) of the Act

Conducted in accordance with section 34(2) of the FOI Act by Stephen Rafferty, Senior Investigator, who is authorised by the Information Commissioner to conduct this review

Background

On 14 May 2014 the applicants submitted a request to TUSLA for all records relating to their daughter. On 8 September TUSLA released 14 of 16 records it had identified as coming within the scope of the request, subject to redactions under section 28 of the Act in order to protect the personal information of third parties, and refused access to two other records. The records to which access was refused were copies of records otherwise provided to the applicants. Pages 2-5 are a copy of pages 8-11, pages 6 is a copy of page 12, page 7 is a copy of page 13, and page 22 is a copy of pages 23 and 24 (reproduced on one page). For the purposes of the original decision, pages 2-7 is one record to which access was refused. Page 22 is the other record to which access was refused.

On 28 September 2014, the applicants sought an internal review of this decision, as they were not satisfied that all relevant records had been considered for release. On 7 November 2014, TUSLA released some additional information contained in the records to the applicants that had previously been redacted under section 28 of the Act and upheld the remainder of its original decision.

On 3 February 2015 the applicants submitted an application to this Office for a review of that decision, as they remained of the the opinion that TUSLA had not considered all relevant records for release. In conducting this review I have had regard to correspondence between the applicant and TUSLA, to correspondence between the applicant and this Office, to correspondence between TUSLA and this Office, and the contents of the records released to the applicants.

In the interests of clarity, I should point out that this review was carried out under the provisions of the FOI Acts 1997-2003 notwithstanding the fact that the FOI Act 2014 has now been enacted. The transitional provisions in section 55 of the 2014 Act provide that any action commenced under the 1997 Act but not completed before the commencement of the 2014 Act shall continue to be performed and shall be completed as if the 1997 Act had not been repealed.

Scope of Review

This review is concerned with the questions of whether TUSLA was justified in redacting information contained in the records released under section 28 of the Act and whether it was justified in refusing access to further records sought by the applicants under section 10(1)(a) of the Act on the basis that no further records exist or could be found.

Preliminary Matters
Although I am obliged to give reasons for my decision, Section 43(3) of the FOI Act requires me to take all reasonable precautions in the course of a review to prevent disclosure of information contained in an exempt record. This means that the extent to which I can describe the contents of the records is limited. I should also explain that section 8(4) of the FOI Act provides that in deciding whether to grant or refuse a request any reason that the requester gives for the request has to be disregarded.

Analysis and Findings

Section 28
TUSLA redacted certain information from a number of the records that it released to the applicant under section 28 of...