The Information Commissioner has criticised an over reliance on external legal advisors by a small number of public bodies when responding to requests for access to records under the Freedom of Information Act.
A total of 37,437 requests were made to public bodies last year.
In his annual report for 2023, published today, Ger Deering highlighted a growing trend by a small number of public bodies to contract out their decision making on FOI requests to external legal advisors
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Deering said he is drawing attention to the situation now because it is not yet widespread and he would not like to see it become widespread.
He said that while the "vast majority" of FOI requests were "dealt with well", the commission has noticed that in a small number of cases the bodies seem to be relying on external legal advice.
"Apart from the cost of it ... what we've found is that the culture is different," he explained.
"The culture in the public service ... is that the information really should be released. We find the culture in external legal advisors isn't always like that.
"In fact, what they tend to do is put blanket exemptions ... and there are legitimate exemptions where information need not be released, but what we've found in some cases is a blanket argument that all of this should be redacted or not released on all the grounds," he said.
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Mr Deering said there was a view in some bodies that they should not be subject to FOI requests.
He said that in the last year, there were some FOIs in relation to the bodies that are spending money on external legal advisors.
"In the various decisions that I've issued, I have actually pointed to this and requested that bodies in these cases be more targeted," he said.
"If they've a genuine reason why a particular piece of information shouldn't be released, then they should make that argument in a targeted way and they should quote the relevant part of the legislation.
"But this notion that the sky will fall down if all of our information is released just doesn't work."
Mr Deering said the commission issued a number of Section 45 notices last year, particularly to Cork City Council, which he described as "completely unacceptable".
"That means that Cork City Council did not produce the information to us that we needed. We cannot decide on whether information should be released or not if we don't actually have the information," he explained.
"So the basic prerequisite is, if we're doing an appeal, we need to see the information that has been refused. We then come to an independent decision as to whether that information should be released or not."
Mr Deering said a similar situation involving Trinity College Dublin was "very disappointing".
"Trinity College decided that some of the information that they weren't releasing was legally privileged information. That may well have been, but they didn't supply the information to us.
"We regularly make a decision that information is legally privileged. If we come to that conclusion, we won't release the information.
"But Trinity decided that - on the basis of legal advice - that they wouldn't actually provide that information to us so that we could make that call."
Mr Deering said there is a "constant increase" in request for FOIs, which he said was "a good thing".
He said that while journalists use FOI requests a lot, the bigger users now are customers of the public service bodies.
"Who, for one reason or another, may want their own information... or they may be unhappy with the decision of the body and want to know how that was arrived at," he said.
