Councillors win Freedom of Information request over County Development Plan tapes

Nine members of Meath County Council have won a Freedom of Information request to get access to over 80 hours of taped debate that took place during the review of the county development plan held physically and by Zoom between 19th October last year and 5th March this year.

The nine members of the Technical Group on the County Council, headed by Independent Cllr Brian Fitzgerald, had filed an appeal to the Information Commissioner after the Council turned down an FoI request from the nine for access to the tapes.

The decision of an investigator in the Commissioner’s office that the tapes should be given to the councillors, delivered to the technical group’s solicitor on Tuesday this week, was welcomed by Cllr Fitzgerald on behalf of the nine councillors.

He said the decision to grant the Freedom of Information request was a vindication of councillors’ rights in the matter. The commissioner’s decision will have no immediate effect on the county development plan which came into effect on 3rd November this year.

The council had refused access to the tapes earlier this year, stating that the tapes would be used simply as an “aide memoire” to the drawing up of the minutes of the county development plan meetings. And claimed that the tapes could be destroyed afterwards.

When Government lockdown procedures were enforced because of the Cocvid-19 crisis, Meath County Council held 80 hours of meetings on the county plan by virtual means. The council has said that the recordings were merely an “aide memoire” to the compiling of the minutes and that the tapes could be destroyed after the development plan is completed later this year. However, members of the technical group on the council Brian Fitzgerald, Amanda Smith, Elaine McGinty, Geraldine Keogan, Francis Deane, Emer Toibin, Nick Killian, Gillian Toole, Trevor Golden requested a hard copy of the minutes of the meetings and any additional material including notices of motion from the floor of the meetings.

Cllr Fitzgerald said on Tuesday that the technical group members were “obviously delighted” that the Information Commissioner’s office had held that the tapes should be released. “We are very satisfied that we have been vindicated in our request but it is a great pity that we had to go to such an extent. We will have to wait four weeks until we see whether the council will go to the High Court to appeal the decision.”