Thread: Attorney General advised Dept of Justice they did not have to contact ex-minister #FrancesFitzgerald about e-mails with #TerryProne & the Communications Clinic. These were among records that Dept originally said didn't exist but were believed held on private email account 
This followed instruction from Office of the Information Commissioner that Ms Fitzgerald should be contacted to see what records she held. Interestingly, Dept ended up doing it anyway despite advice from Attorney General. Background to this here: oic.ie/decisions/ken-…
Records also show that during original handling of request back in March 2017, two of Frances Fitzgerald's special advisers said they had no records relevant to the request. One of them was in very regular contact with Ms Prone (names deleted by me)
At one stage, the Information Commissioner said they might use their powers to compel the Dept of Justice to provide access to records. Reference to the Charleton Tribunal and correspondence between Terry Prone and Noirín O'Sullivan were referenced:
Internal Dept of Justice records expressing disbelief at approach Information Commissioner was taking. Suggested they were "pushing the boundaries" in asking Department to go trawling for records held in personal email accounts etc (my deletions again)
Dept of Justice said it was not in a position to compel former minister Frances Fitzgerald to search for relevant records in her private email accounts. Said they would seek advice before taking this “unprecedented step”
Department of Justice said their advice was that asking the minister to search private email accounts for FOI records was outside of scope of the #FOIA Act
Department of Justice confirms that despite “previous assurances” there were no records available, there are in fact quite a few ... seventy odd at last count
Sin é for this evening; other work to be done now. As always, please support @RightToKnowIE if you can - all records sourced through it.
