Introduction

From January 2005, new information access rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) came fully into force.

The FOIA gives you the general right of access to all the policy and administrative information we hold and the EIRs give the right of access to environmental information.

Since 1st January 2005 you have had:

• A right to know if the Housing Executive holds the information requested; and

• A right of access to that information, subject to certain exemptions.

You can find out more about Freedom of Information here.

Section 19 of the FOIA requires public authorities to produce and maintain a Publication Scheme. This scheme will tell you about the classes of information we publish. It also tells you where you can obtain this information and if there is any charge.

We are currently reviewing the content of our Publication Scheme in line with new guidelines recently issued by the Information Commissioner. Our new Publication Scheme will shortly be available for download from this website.

You can complain to the Housing Executive if you are not satisfied with the response to your request for information under the FOIA or the EIRs, including how your request was handled.  Our target time for determining such complaints is 20 working days.

You can also find out about the Data Protection Act in this section. This is an important Act which gives all our customers certain rights to privacy and to access the information that we keep about them.