{"id":12527,"date":"2014-04-14T13:08:35","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T13:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/s1-advancing-the-right-to-know\/c40-national-campaigns\/12527"},"modified":"2018-11-13T10:11:52","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T09:11:52","slug":"ireland-ogp-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/2014-04-14\/ireland-ogp-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil society call on Irish Government to commit to dropping access to information fees as part of Ireland\u2019s 1st OGP action plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dublin, 14 April 2014<\/em> &#8211; Ireland&#8217;s first Open Government Partneship (OGP) action plan should contain a commitment to abolish fees for making access to information requests according to civil society in an <a href=\"http:\/\/irl.okfn.org\/2014\/04\/11\/open-letter-calling-for-abolishing-foiaie-fees\/\" target=\"_blank\">open letter<\/a> to the Irish Minister for Reform, Brendan Howlin. The letter follows campaigning in late 2013 to get fees abolished, and has been published given the upcoming OGP European Regional Meeting to take place in Dublin on 8-9 May.<\/p>\n<p>The letter, signed by Access Info Europe and 28 other civil society organisations and over 40 individuals, more specifically challenges the charging of up-front fees for FOI requests and appeals to access to environmental information denials, charging of fees for internal review and appeals\u037e and charging of multiple fees for so-called multi-faceted requests.<\/p>\n<p>During the government-funded public consultation on Ireland\u2019s participation in the Open Government Partnership in July and September 2013, \u201cabolishing fees for all stages of FOI and Access to Environmental Information (AIE) requests\u201d was highlighted by civil society as an OGP priority.<\/p>\n<p>Just two months later, however, Ireland\u2019s commitment to OGP principles came into question as an amendment to charge additional fees for multi-faceted FOI requests was suggested by the government at the last minute. The proposed amendments directly negated the promised abolition of FOI fees and disregarded the unanimous vote by citizens and civil society groups to abolish access to information fees in the most recent round of the OGP public consultation process.<\/p>\n<p>The letter calls for Ireland to drop the fees in order to comply with international standards reflected in the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents which prohibits up-front charges for requests (Article 7(1)) as well as the recommendations by the UN Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights\u037e no longer be the last country in Europe that systematically charges its people \u201cto exercise a fundamental right\u201d\u037e and remove itself from the small group of 16 out of 95 countries worldwide with access to information laws that charge fees for requests.<\/p>\n<p>You can see a <strong>copy of the letter <\/strong>on the OKFN Ireland website <a href=\"http:\/\/irl.okfn.org\/2014\/04\/11\/open-letter-calling-for-abolishing-foiaie-fees\/#sthash.jdoj4tUr.dpuf\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dublin, 14 April 2014 &#8211; Ireland&#8217;s first Open Government Partneship (OGP) action plan should contain a commitment to abolish fees for making access to information requests according to civil society in an open letter to the Irish Minister for Reform, Brendan Howlin. The letter follows campaigning in late 2013 to get fees abolished, and has been published given the upcoming OGP European Regional Meeting to take place in Dublin on 8-9 May. The letter, signed by Access Info Europe and 28 other civil society organisations and over 40 individuals, more specifically challenges the charging of up-front fees for FOI requests<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12902,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12527\/revisions\/12902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}