A civil servant should have access to all Department of Agriculture records in his personnel file, a High Court judge ruled.
Mr Justice O'Donovan directed that an April 1999 decision of the Information Commissioner to grant Mr Sean Glynn full access to some records and partial access to others be varied: Mr Glynn should see all records. An appeal by the Minister for Agriculture against the Commissioner's decision was dismissed.
On April 16th, 1998, Mr Glynn had asked the Department for "sight of my entire personnel file" under Section 7 of the Freedom of Information Act. On May 18th, 1998, the Department granted Mr Glynn access to records from April 21st, 1995, but refused him access to those before then.
Mr Glynn then sought a review of the Department's decision. On June 24th the Department upheld its earlier refusal.
He appealed to the Information Commissioner who granted Mr Glynn full access to those records for which the Department had given approval and partial access to those to which it had refused access. The Department appealed that ruling.
In his judgment yesterday, the judge said that in his view the Commissioner had wrongly embarked on a consideration of the contents of Mr Glynn's records during his appeal.
The Commissioner had said there were 41 records on his personnel file created from November 1st, 1990, to April 21st, 1995, and had maintained that all, with one exception, were concerned with an incident involving Mr Glynn in July 1992 and its aftermath. This did not appear to be correct, the judge said.