{"id":71,"date":"2005-11-13T20:06:48","date_gmt":"2005-11-13T20:06:48","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"Access_to_Information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"Access to Information"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although the Government has seriously weakened the Freedom of<br \/>\nInformation Act, there are other important remedies available to the<br \/>\npublic, especially in the area of environmental information.&nbsp;<br \/>\nIreland has signed up to the Aarhus Convention on Access to<br \/>\nInformation,Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to<br \/>\nJustice in Environmental Matters. (www.unece.org\/env\/pp) Unfortunately<br \/>\nthe government has not yet ratified the Convention so it is not in<br \/>\nforce here.<\/p>\n<p>However, the European Union has taken action to implement the Aarhus<br \/>\nConvention.&nbsp; (europa.eu.int\/comm\/environment\/aarhus)&nbsp; In<br \/>\nparticular, it has implemented two Directives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n  <\/li>\n<li>Directive 2003\/4\/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council<br \/>\nof 28 January 2003 on public access to environmental information and<br \/>\nrepealing Council Directive 90\/313\/EEC, and<\/li>\n<li>\n  <\/li>\n<li>Directive 2003\/35\/EC of the European Parliament and of the<br \/>\nCouncil of 26 May 2003 providing for public participation in respect of<br \/>\nthe drawing up of certain plans and programmes relating to the<br \/>\nenvironment and amending with regard to public participation and access<br \/>\nto justice Council Directives 85\/337\/EEC and 96\/61\/EC<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nBoth of these Directives should have been implemented in Ireland already &#8211; in February and June 2005. #<\/p>\n<p>However, you can still rely on the information Directive and on the<br \/>\nexisting Irish Regulations , SI 125 of 1998<br \/>\n(www.irishstatutebook.ie\/ZZSI125Y1998.html) which provide that <em>all public authorities must make environmental information available<\/em> (with certain limited exemptions). Unlike the Freedom of Information Act, <em>there is no charge for making a request for this information<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, if there is any way in which I can help you get<br \/>\ninformation, by putting down questions at Council meetings or if you<br \/>\nwould like a Green Party TD to put down questions in the D&aacute;il, please<br \/>\nlet me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although the Government has seriously weakened the Freedom of Information Act, there are other important remedies available to the public, especially in the area of environmental information.&nbsp; Ireland has signed up to the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information,Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. (www.unece.org\/env\/pp) Unfortunately the government has not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidhealy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}