The High Court has set aside two Information Commissioner decisions refusing a man access to records about child sexual abuse allegations made against him, and remitted the matter for fresh consideration. It did not decide that the records must be released.
The appeal concerned decisions made in November 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act 1997. The records, created between January and October 1998, related to concerns reported about the appellant and an assessment that later classified them as “unconfirmed”. The man appealed on a point of law, challenging how the Commissioner applied the public-interest test that balances disclosure against privacy.
The judgment recounts that the appellant began access proceedings concerning a child he had raised as his daughter. His estranged wife reported concerns to the former Eastern Health Board the week after those proceedings were served on her. The child was referred to St Louise’s Unit at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. The appellant declined to participate in the assessment after seeking procedural assurances. In October 1999, he was told the concerns were unconfirmed. The judgment explains that this category did not mean the allegations had been found false.
The Commissioner had concluded that the records contained sensitive personal information about the child and that the public interest in disclosure did not outweigh the child’s privacy interests. The High Court found that she gave undue weight to the positions of the Board and Hospital and did not adequately consider the circumstances in which the concerns were reported, including their timing in relation to the access case. It held that the Commissioner was wrong to find there was no evidence of malice and that the appellant’s submissions on that issue were insignificant to the public-interest balance.
The court allowed the appeal, declared the Commissioner’s decisions erroneous on a point of law in those respects, set the decisions aside and remitted the matter for fresh consideration. It also ordered costs and reasonable expenses for the appellant. The judgment noted that the Board had separately relied on a confidence exemption, but the Commissioner had not assessed it; the High Court said it could not review the legality of a decision that had not been made. Its comments on that exemption did not determine whether the records were exempt or require their disclosure.