Council ordered to give names of hotels and B&Bs for homeless

Galway City Council has been directed to release the names of city hotels and B&Bs it uses to provide temporary emergency accommodation for homeless people.

In a landmark judgement, the Information Commissioner ruled the local authority was not justified in withholding the names of the accommodation providers it pays tens of thousands of euros to each month.

The Council has a month to appeal the decision.

The Galway City Tribune, using the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, had applied for a breakdown of the costs associated with the homeless crisis, including a list of the B&Bs and hotels that it engaged to provide shelter for the needy.

The local authority released the amount it had spent during a specified period but refused to provide details of the names or amounts paid to each hotel and B&B.

An internal appeal of the FOI refusal was upheld by the City Council but this decision has now been reversed by Information Commissioner, Peter Tyndall.

The Commissioner sided with this newspaper when it was argued the release of the information was in the public interest, and in the interest of openness and transparency in local government.

In its submission to the Commissioner, the Council argued that releasing the data could have a negative impact on the emergency accommodation providers’ commercial interests by “putting off paying customers”.

This, it said, could deter those hotels and B&Bs from providing rooms to the Council for homeless people in future.

For more on the Information Commissioner’s judgement, see this week’s Galway City Tribune