What is the PRONI Annual Release?
Annually since 1976, official records held by PRONI which were 30 years old have been reviewed with a view to making them publicly available (“the 30 year rule").
In September 2011, the Assembly accepted a Legislative Consent Motion to reduce the time limit for release from 30 years to 20 years (“the 20 year Rule”). This is underpinned by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the amendments made to it by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.
The 20 year rule is being phased in over 10 years, with two years of records being reviewed and released each year. This year, the records of NI Departments and the NIO with terminal dates of 1991 are being brought forward for release during August 2017 and the records of 1992 will be brought forward in December 2017. This process involves the referral of the files to the Responsible Authority for sensitivity review. This entails a page by page examination to ensure that a record contains nothing sensitive as defined by the FOI Act and DP Act.
Records released - December 2017
481 files being deemed as suitable for release as "fully open". A further 158 files are open but subject to blanking out of some content. 43 files remain closed in full, the bulk of which are individual prisoner files and Honours files.
The main file series being released includes Central Secretariat.
Issues covered
Some of the main issues covered by the 1992 release include:
- Political developments and talks between Northern Ireland parties and the Secretary of State
- SECRASP papers (Social, Economic and Community Relations Aspects of Security Policy)
- Cross border economic cooperation
- Security legislation (including ministerial consideration of Emergency Provisions and Special Category)
- US / Northern Ireland relations, specifically fair employment (the MacBride principles)
- Anglo Irish Intergovernmental Conference
- British/Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body
- Political Development Group papers
- Secretary of State's briefings on various NI issues
- Child Abuse
- Fisheries
- Historic Monuments
- Industrial development
- Economic impact of tourism
- Youth training
- Anti-Racketeering activities and paramilitary influence in the construction industry
- Rural development
- NI Film Council
Full and partial closure
Records may be closed either fully or in part only. Partial closure involves the removal of a limited number of papers from the file that have been deemed as exempt from the right to know under FOI.
To facilitate the release of as much information as possible, redaction can be used to blank out sensitive data within individual documents that would otherwise prevent release. All information which is withheld in the manner outlined above, however, must be retained in accordance with the exemptions contained within the FOI Act. In the majority of cases, the reason for extended closure was the application of section 40 – the personal information exemption – of the FOI Act. This means that personal information is exempt from the right to know if it would breach the Data Protection principles.
Please note that any file reference which ends with an ‘A’ denotes an open part of a file which has had certain information partially removed or blanked out under a specified FOI Exemption.
What is usually published?
More recently, PRONI publishes:
A full list of all files brought forward for release in a given year, containing:
- access decision
- PRONI reference number
- file covering dates
- short description (usually no more than one line)
- department file number
A highlights list of ‘opened’ files which may be of particular historical significance, containing:
- PRONI reference number
- file covering dates
- longer description (usually a paragraph)
- department file number
What was released this year?
2017 Annual releases (end December, 2017)
Archive
To access the Annual Releases Archive visit the following page: