Kerry County Council refused to release the identities of those who lodged complaints about overgrown hedges, environmental issues and alleged planning breaches.
This is shown in decisions published by the Office of the Information Commissioner. Using the Freedom of Information Act, a number of people had sought the identities of complainants.
The Freedom of Information Act gives people the right to access records held by departments or public bodies, have personal information updated or corrected, or be given reasons for decision taken by public bodies that affect them.
The Office of the Information Commissioner, or OIC, carries out independent reviews of decisions taken by public bodies on FOI Act requests. In recent years, a number of requests to Kerry County Council have been appealed to the OIC; they relate to complaints around a person’s property, hedges or planning permission.
In 2019, a woman contacted the council to find out who had complained about overgrown hedges on her property, while another person sought the information held by the council on their property after someone had lodged a complaint about it.
Another person, who was seeking the identities of those who complained about planning enforcement, claimed they were entitled to know who had complained them on the basis that the person making the complaint hadn’t explicitly asked for their identities to kept private.
In all cases, the council refused to identify the complainants, saying that enforcement of the legislation was reliant on the guarantee that people would not have their identity revealed to the person who was the subject of the complaint. The council’s decisions to not give out complainants’ identities was backed up by the OIC.
A longer version of this story can be found here.
