Decision
Mr F. and Coillte
From Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information (OCEI)
Case number: OCE-147044-P4T2M1
Published on
From Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information (OCEI)
Case number: OCE-147044-P4T2M1
Published on
Whether Coillte has conducted adequate searches in order to locate all records which may come within scope of the original AIE request, pursuant to article 7(5).
23 October 2025
1. On 29 December 2023 the appellant made an AIE request for:
“Information related to the felling without a licence of c. 4.5 ha of trees by Coillte at Lyracrumpane, Co. Kerry (report dated 20-1-23)”.
2. On 31 of January 2024 Coillte issued its original decision granting the appellant two records which it identified as falling into the scope of the review, stating:
“Some of the information has been redacted pursuant to the mandatory exception contained in Article 8(a)(i) of the AIE Regulations, which provides that: - [a] public authority shall not make available environmental information in accordance with article 7 where disclosure of the information—
(a) would adversely affect—
(i) the confidentiality of personal information relating to a natural person who has not consented to the disclosure of the information, and where that confidentiality is otherwise protected by law.
The privacy and confidentiality of such personal information is protected by Data Protection Law and the GDPR, by the Irish Constitution, by the EU European Charter of Fundamental Rights and by the European Convention on Human Rights.”
3. On 31 January 2024 the appellant requested an internal review of the decision, stating:
“I am not satisfied that all information falling within the scope of my request has been identified. No information on the issue of Chain of Custody of the illegally felled timber has been provided. No monitoring records for the illegally felled area have been provided. In addition, there is a particular redaction which does not appear to be personal information”.
4. On 29 February 2024 Coillte issued an internal review decision which affirmed the original decision, stating:
“The Request, as worded, sought access to a specific category of records, i.e. “information related to felling”. I have reviewed the approach taken by the first instance decision team at Coillte in considering the Request, assessing what records fell within the precise scope of the Request as worded and thereafter locating and collating the records that fell within the defined category. My review included: Steps taken to review the decision I am satisfied all documents within this category were appropriately and adequately identified and granted in full by the Decision. I can confirm that the records provided to you constitute the full extent of records corresponding to the wording of the Request. I affirm that no documents captured by the wording of the Request have been withheld from you.
To clarify the records provided by the first decision maker were obtained after discussions between the AIE staff member and the relevant Subject Matter Experts (SME) who confirmed that records existed. One SME, who managed the process that is the subject of the Request, searched, retrieved and collated all information which was thereafter provided to the AIE staff member. Subsequently the AIE staff member examined all records to ensure any applicable exemptions and / or redactions were to be applied, formatted the records and collated them.
Some of the information has been redacted pursuant to the mandatory exception contained in Article 8(a)(i) of the AIE Regulations, which provides that: -
“[a] public authority shall not make available environmental information in accordance with article 7 where disclosure of the information— (a) would adversely affect— (i) the confidentiality of personal information relating to a natural person who has not consented to the disclosure of the information, and where that confidentiality is otherwise protected by law.”
I can confirm that this information is redacted as it relates to an external contractor, and this minor redaction does not in any way affect the context of the information that issued to you. In relation to your comments (when requesting an internal review) that additional categories of information should have been provided, I would like to highlight the Commissioner’s decision in the case Friends of the Irish Environment Limited versus Public Authority: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Case Number: CEI/16/0004.
It is open to the appellant to submit a more specific request for environmental information if it wishes to do so and to avoid adding "catch-all" or "trawling" elements to what are otherwise appropriately specific requests for environmental information. Coillte reminds you that specificity in all requests is mutually beneficial by aiding us in adhering to the Request, as accurately and efficiently as possible. This requires that a request identifies specific records, whether by name, date or another particular identifier. It was reasonable for the decision-maker and the SME to have interpreted the initial Request, in the manner which they did.
I note that it would have been possible for you to have provided more specific information in setting out the Request, given you were able to do so at internal review stage. It is my opinion that the additional information requested is outside the scope of the original Request. As internal reviewer, it is my role to review the Request as received and the information relevant to that request, and to make a fresh decision on that request in light of the above. Thus, anything outside the scope of the original request is not subject to this internal review.
If specific additional data is sought, which is not reflected in the records granted to you, Coillte invites you to submit a fresh AIE Request clearly setting out those specific information types as you did in the request for internal review, rather than requesting the more ambiguous or vague “information relation to” as originally set out. Without prejudice to my comments above, following discussions on the 20 February 2023 with a subject matter expert who has processed Operational Monitoring Records, a key word search was carried out on the relevant database, using the harvesting unit number “KY03-H0094”, which is relevant to the felling licence, I would inform you that there are no Operational Monitoring Reports available for this site. The basis for this is that no site monitoring was documented during this period”.
5. The appellant appealed to this Office on 4 March 2024.
6. I have been directed by the Commissioner to undertake a review under article 12(5) of the Regulations. In carrying out my review, I have had regard to the submissions made by the appellant and Coillte. In addition, I have had regard to:
• the Guidance document provided by the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government on the implementation of the AIE Regulations (the Minister’s Guidance);
• Directive 2003/4/EC (the AIE Directive), upon which the AIE Regulations are based;
• the 1998 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention); and
• The Aarhus Convention—An Implementation Guide (Second edition, June 2014) (‘the Aarhus Guide’).
7. In accordance with article 12(5) of the AIE Regulations, my role is to review the public authority’s internal review decision and to affirm, annul or vary it. Where appropriate in the circumstances of an appeal, I will require the public authority to make available environmental information to the appellant.
8. When the appellant appealed to this Office there were three redactions made to the released record, one of which had been provided to the appellant in un-redacted form from another public authority, leaving the remaining two as subject to the appeal. During the course of this investigation, in seeking submissions from Coillte, it re-issued the report to the appellant without the remaining two redactions, noting that upon review the redacted name which pertained to a limited company does not constitute personal information for the purposes of article 8(a)(i). Accordingly, as the appellant has been issued with the information, I consider this aspect of the appeal is resolved and not in scope.
9. The scope of the appeal therefore is limited to whether Coillte has conducted adequate searches in order to locate all records which may come within scope of the original AIE request, pursuant to article 7(5) of the AIE Regulations.
10. In his submission to this Office the appellant states:
“My request is for information "related" to the illegal felling of trees in Co. Kerry. This broadens the context of my request from merely information on the actual felling works. I pointed to this in my request for an internal review where I referred to Chain of Custody information. The attached report KY03-H0094 report.pdf contains three redactions, one of which is the name of the harvesting contractor (Contractor - identified in KY03-H0094 report.docx provided to me by DAFM under AIE request 23 655)
The other redacted information is contained in a section which appears in the Coillte report provided to me but not in the report provided by Coillte to DAFM.
There is no STICKS software in the machine in question as this machine is not a Long Term Contract (LTC) machine and was taken into the BAU under the redacted to accommodate the BAU where production needed to be increased and to allow the BAU to complete their harvesting programme. There is an agreement with redacted that STICKS will be installed in this machine in the New year.
Whilst I accept that the second redacted section may include personal information it is very difficult to see, in the context of the sentence, how the first redacted content could include personal information and no other justification for refusal has been provided. I suspect that Coillte may be trying to hide something here.
I am of the view that Coillte has not adequately demonstrated that the exception of Article 8 (a) (i) applies to the personal information redacted as no adverse effect has been demonstrated to result from release. The information is already in the public domain as DAFM saw no basis to refuse the same personal information.
Under their forestry certification Coillte has to create and maintain Chain of Custody information to validate that timber and timber products has come from forests that have been managed sustainably. Clearly in circumstances where timber has been illegally felled (whether intentional or not), that timber cannot be considered to be from a sustainably managed plantation. There should be information on the record as to what happened to the timber from the illegally felled area which would confirm that it has been excluded from the certification supply chain. Such information is related to the illegal felling.
I contend that my request is specific and does not contain "catch-all" or "trawling" elements. The request is for information on a very specific matter. It is my view that Coillte has taken a deliberately overly restrictive interpretation of my request which has failed to consider the fact that my request sought information related to the illegal felling and not just information on the felling itself. Coillte did not seek an clarification from me regarding the scope of my request; they merely applied their restrictive interpretation.
I am of the view that other information falling within the scope of my request has not been identified.
I maintain that there is a very strong public interest case in the release of the information falling within the scope of my request as it underpins the integrity of the forestry certification process under which Coillte operates. If Coillte is putting timber in the certification supply chain which has been felled illegally than consumers are being misled.”
11. In its submission to this Office Coillte reiterate the search efforts undertaken with respect to identifying all information in scope, as detailed in its internal review decision, outlined in paragraph 4. Further, it states:
“Coillte remains committed to transparency and to facilitating access to environmental information in accordance with the AIE Regulations. However, it is not reasonable to expect public authorities to anticipate or infer the precise records a requester may have in mind, particularly where the requester has the expertise and familiarity to articulate their request with precision. Where a requester is dissatisfied with the scope of information provided, the appropriate course of action is to submit a new, focused request identifying the specific records or categories of information sought, instead of introducing speculation and broadening the scope at the internal review stage. Coillte is satisfied that the Released Records represent all existing records within the scope of the Request.”.
12. With respect to redactions made under article 8(a)(i) Coillte state:
“Having reviewed the unredacted KY03-H0094 Report, I am of the view that a particular redaction, specifically, the name of a limited company, ‘Softwood Limited’, which appears twice in the record, does not constitute personal information. Accordingly, we have now provided the Appellant with a revised version of the KY03-H0094 Report, in which only the name of the external contractor remains redacted. I enclose a copy of the report that was sent to the Appellant on 16 October, for your records and trust this aspect of the appeal is now resolved”.
13. In this case the appellant contends that Coillte should hold further information relevant to his request. Article 7(5) of the AIE Regulations is the relevant provision to consider, where the question arises as to whether the requested environmental information or any further environmental information is held by or for the public authority concerned. It provides as follows:
“Where a request is made to a public authority and the information requested is not held by or for the authority concerned, that authority shall inform the applicant as soon as possible that the information is not held by or for it”.
14. What will be considered reasonable will vary from case to case, but as a general guide, I set out below the type of information that the Office would generally expect to be set out in a decision where a public authority is relying on article 7(5) of the regulations:
(i) an outline of exactly which areas/units etc. of the organisation were searched for the information;
(ii) an explanation of how searches were carried out (i.e. manually, by computer, by name, by key words). Keywords should be recorded and provided in the decision as appropriate;
(iii) details of the individuals consulted in connection with the search;
(iv) a description of the searches carried out to cover the possibility of misfiled/misplaced records;
(v) details of guidelines, practices, procedures and arrangements in relation to the storage, filing, archiving, retention and destruction of the type of information requested in this case;
(vi) the basis on which the public authority has concluded that it does not hold any information within the scope of the appellant’s request and that no such information is held by any other person or body on its behalf.
15. This Office’s approach to dealing with this type of case is to assess whether adequate steps have been taken to identify and locate relevant environmental information, having regard to the particular circumstances. In determining whether the steps taken are adequate in the circumstances, a standard of reasonableness is applied. What will be considered reasonable will vary from case to case.
16. It is important to note that where a public authority refuses a request for records under article 7(5) of the AIE regulations, the question we must consider is whether the public authority has taken all reasonable steps to ascertain the whereabouts of relevant records. The regulations do not require absolute certainty as to the existence or location of records, as situations arise where records are lost or simply cannot be found, or, indeed, may have been destroyed in line with the body’s records management policies. It is also important to note that we do not generally expect public authorities to carry out extensive or indefinite general searches for records simply because an appellant asserts that more records should or might exist or rejects a public authority’s explanation of why a record does not exist. The test in article 7(5) is whether the public authority has taken all reasonable steps to locate the record sought.
17. I note the description of searches which Coillte have provided in identifying the two records released, detailed in paragraph 4. I am of the view that Coillte’s description of action upon request upon receipt of the AIE request and at internal review stage, would appear to be reasonable in the context of the information requested. It would appear that the appellant’s contention that more information may exist relates specifically to the two aspects of information noted in the internal review request, relating to a ‘chain of custody’ and monitoring records.
18. While it is Coillte’s position that this additional information, noted by the appellant at internal review stage, is outside of the scope of the original request, it subsequently outlines a keyword search undertaken using the harvesting number which, it states, confirmed no operational monitoring reports are held by it. I am of the view that this sufficiently demonstrates adequate searches with respect to this information.
19. With respect to information relating to the ‘chain of custody’ of the felled timber, I am of the view that this specific ask falls outside of the scope of the original request and would need to be put to Coillte in a separate AIE request. I note that it is the appellant’s view that the request for information ‘related to’ the felling should be interpreted more broadly than just ‘information on the felling’ however I am of the view this would not reasonable be deduced from the wording of the original AIE request. While the chain of custody of the timber is prima facie ‘related’ to its felling, I consider it to be a specific category of additional information which goes beyond the original request. It is my view, that if an appellant is seeking specific categories of information such as this, it needs to be noted in the AIE request at original stage, this would be efficient and fruitful for both appellant and public body. That it was noted only at internal review stage does not automatically mean that Coillte were obliged to undertake further searches when it was its view, and one which I share, that this falls outside of the scope of the original wording.
20. I should caution here, that I am guided by the facts of each case and that in the spirit of the AIE regime public bodies should interpret requests as broadly as appropriate and relevant, depending on the category of information at hand. This is not the same however as appellant’s moving beyond what can reasonably be understood as the scope of the request, based on the original wording and category of information, at internal review stage. In this case I am of the view that the request was interpreted appropriately, and the searches followed same.
21. I am satisfied that Coillte has taken sufficient steps to determine that it does not hold further environmental information relevant to the appellant’s request. For the sake of completeness, I note that the appellant has the option to submit a fresh request for information beyond the scope of his original request should he wish to do so.
Having carried out a review under article 12(5) of the AIE Regulations, I affirm Coillte’s decision with respect to article 7(5) of the AIE Regulations.
A party to the appeal or any other person affected by this decision may appeal to the High Court on a point of law from the decision. Such an appeal must be initiated not later than two months after notice of the decision was given to the person bringing the appeal.
Julie O’Leary
On behalf of the Commissioner for Environmental Information