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The Office of the Information Commissioner is an independent body that reviews decisions public bodies make on requests for access to records under the Freedom of Information Act 2014. This document sets out our commitments and the service standards you can expect from us.

 

Contact by telephone

If you contact us by telephone we will aim to:

  • Answer your call promptly
  • Give you our name when we answer your call
  • Be courteous and helpful to you at all times
  • Answer your query in full
  • If we cannot do so immediately, we will take your details and call you back as soon as possible
  • Respond to all voicemail messages promptly

                                                           

Written correspondence

If you send us a letter, email or online enquiry we will:

  • Acknowledge your correspondence within 2-3 days
  • Ensure you receive a full reply within 10 working days
  • If we cannot provide a full reply within 10 working days, we will write to you and explain why. We will let you know when you can expect a full reply
  • Give a contact name and contact details as well as a reference number (where appropriate)
  • Write to you in simple and clear language and avoid using technical or legal terms where possible

 

Applications for review to the Commissioner

If you apply for a review of a decision taken by a public body, we will:

  • Acknowledge your application within 2-3 days
  • Keep you advised of progress on your case
  • Inform you as soon as possible and as clearly as possible of the outcome of our review

 

Visitors to the Office

If you visit us in person we will:

  • Treat you with courtesy, respect your privacy and be fair in our dealings with you
  • Meet you at the agreed time if you have an appointment
  • Provide appropriate facilities for meetings
  • Keep our public offices clean and tidy and ensure that they meet health and safety standards

 

Service through Irish

We will assist people who wish to carry out their business with us through Irish

  • Correspondence received in Irish will be answered in Irish
  • We will publish key documents including our Annual Reports in Irish and English
  • We will ensure that information leaflets aimed at the public are available in both Irish and English
  • An Irish version of our website will mirror as far as practicable the English version
  • We will meet our other commitments under the Official Languages Act 2003 and the Office’s Official Languages Scheme as published on our websites

 

Equality / Diversity / Disability

  • We commit to dealing with you without discrimination or prejudice
  • We will respect equality and human rights in accordance with Public Sector Duty principles
  • We will aim to have our services and facilities easily available and accessible to you
  • We will respect your right to privacy
  • Contact email for our Access Officer under the Disability Act is accessofficer@oic.ie

 

Complaints

If something goes wrong and you are not satisfied with our service, please tell us. We have a policy for handling complaints against members of staff, which is available on our website or you can ask for details by contacting us directly

 

Help us to help you

You can help us as we try to give you a high quality service:

  • Please state why you want us to conduct a review as clearly and as concisely as you can
  • Please send us copies of key supporting documents when submitting your application for review
  • Quote any relevant reference number in all communications with us
  • Treat our staff and our service with respect
  • Make comments or suggestions about the service you receive

 

Consultation and feedback

We are always interested to hear suggestions on how we can improve our service. If you would like to comment or make a suggestion please e-mail us at info@oic.ie

 

Where to get more information

This document is available on our website www.oic.ie. You can also find details of our other services, policies and contact information on our website.

 

What we expect from public bodies

We expect public bodies to:

· Give people clear and timely decisions on their FOI requests

· Make people aware of our service when giving them their decision

· Treat people who make requests, and our staff, with courtesy and respect

· Work with us to enable us carry out our reviews as quickly and effectively as
  possible

· Give us all the information we ask for within the timescales specified

                                                                                          

 

Where to find us:

Our full contact details are available on the “Contact” webpage.

 

Our address is Office of the Information Commissioner, 6 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, D02 W773. The Office is open Monday to Friday between 9.15 am and 5.00 pm.

 

Phone: +353 1 639 5689
Email: info@oic.ie

 

FOI officer: info@oic.ie

Data protection officer: dataprotection@ombudsman.ie

Usually, you will be asked to write your complaint to the Director General. Sometimes complaints may be made to the Office of the Information Commissioner on the telephone, by calling into the office, or by fax or e-mail.

If your complaint is considered a serious one, the Director General will ask a staff member to act as a Complaints Officer. The Complaints Officer will examine your complaint and make recommendations about it to the Director General.

Documents about your complaint must be kept in a separate file and not held on the personnel file of the person you have complained about.

The staff member you have complained about will be shown all the evidence gathered by the Complaints Officer, including your complaint, and given a chance to respond to this evidence by the Complaints Officer.

In all cases, the person you have complained about will be allowed to comment on the final letter to you before it is sent to you.

If the staff member and the Complaints Officer disagree about the outcome of the examination, the Director General will look at the issue again. The decision of the Director General will be final. Any decision reached will not affect the rights of any individual under Finance Circular 11/2001. This outlines how complaints about the civil service are handled. Due to the Office of the Information Commissioner’s obligations under data protection legislation, we will not be able to share information with you about internal staffing matters. Such matters are deemed to be personal information under the relevant legislation and, as such, confidential. This means that we cannot let you know about any action taken against the staff member as a result of your complaint.

The final letter should be cleared through the Director General and, if appropriate, the Information Commissioner, before it is sent to you.

Each complaint will be dealt with individually. If action is recommended by the Complaints Officer, it will be up to the Director General to make a decision about that recommendation. 

The Complaints Officer may recommend action to the Director General that will prevent the same problem happening again.

How should I behave when making a complaint?


Most people who apply to our office act in a calm and reasonable manner. We understand that making requests against a public body can be stressful and that, from time to time, this stress may show in how you interact with this office. Our staff members know that managing these interactions is part of their job.

Our staff are not expected to tolerate behaviour that is abusive, offensive, threatening or, due to the frequency of contact, takes up too much time and resources that could be spent dealing with other reviews and investigations.


What kind of behaviour is unacceptable?
 

The following types of behaviour are not acceptable:
 
  • Unreasonable persistence
If an application has been reviewed and closed by the Information Commissioner’s office, the following is unreasonable persistence: insisting another investigator looks again at the application after an review has been completed, changing the application to present it again as a new application or continuing with an application that has already been looked at.
 
  • Unreasonable demands
An unreasonable demand can include a demand for an investigation into a matter the Information Commissioner is not allowed to examine, looking for a solution that is not realistic or is disproportionate, or telling the Information Commissioner how to carry out the investigation.
 
  • Unreasonable lack of co-operation
You must present your application in an organised manner. Unreasonable lack of co-operation can include: not identifying the request clearly, presenting too much information and expecting a fast response, changing your application in the middle of the investigation and being dishonest about the facts.
 
  • Unreasonable arguments
You may not make unreasonable arguments. Examples include exaggerating issues, presenting irrelevant or unreasonable arguments, focusing on small details, insisting your version of events is accepted as fact where there is no objective evidence to support it, refusing to consider other versions of events, or being guided by unfounded conspiracy theories or by desire for revenge or a grudge against another person or public body.
 
  • Unreasonable behaviour
Unreasonable behaviour includes threats of violence, abuse of the Information Commissioner's staff, and rude or aggressive conduct.



What happens if I behave in this way?


If we consider your behaviour to be unreasonable, we will tell you why and ask you to change it. If it might be useful, we will consider changing our service in a way that may help you avoid unreasonable behaviour in the future.

If the unreasonable behaviour continues, we will take action to put limits on your contact with our office. This decision will only normally be taken after a senior investigator (or above) has reviewed the situation. Restrictions will be appropriate and in line with the nature of the behaviour. The options we are most likely to consider are:
  •          asking you to contact us by letter only
     
  •          asking you to only make contact with a named staff member
     
  •          asking you to call by telephone only on certain days and times
     
  •          limiting your access to the office
     
  •          asking you to enter an agreement about your future conduct
     
  •          as a final option, terminating all contact with you if this behaviour shows no signs of stopping (the Director General will make this decision)
     
In all cases, we will write to tell you why we believe your behaviour is unreasonable and what action we propose to take. If the behaviour is so extreme that it threatens the immediate safety and welfare of the Information Commissioner’s staff or others, we will consider other options. These could include, reporting the matter to An Garda Síochána or instigating legal action. In such cases, we may not give you prior warning of that action.

Regardless of your behaviour, our staff will act respectfully towards you and take an impartial attitude to your complaint.