The FOI Files: How lobbying returns can uncover how organisations attempt to influence policy

10 Nov 2026, 09:30 by Maria Delaney, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/maria-delaney/ · TheJournal.ie

The FOI Files is a series from our team at The Journal Investigates. Each week, one of our investigative journalists brings you inside the fight for information that we’re all entitled to. They’ll share their documents, their stories – and tips on how to take the journey for yourself.

This week’s file is from editor and investigative journalist Maria Delaney.

See here for The Journal Investigates’ most recent investigations.

WHEN YOU KNOW what you’re looking for, it’s a lot easier to find it!

Given the countless documents that public bodies create every day, asking for specific records within exact time periods not only reduces the search time for workers, but can yield more fruitful results.

For investigations, returns to the Lobbying Register can offer great insights into interactions between certain public officials and organisations.

Lobbying is defined as any communication made directly or indirectly to a specific high-level official about a matter relating to public policy, law or land zoning. It can take the form of an email, phone call, an invitation to an event or an in-person meeting.

So when researching topics, we often use this as a resource to find out who is trying to influence policy or direct change.

This is often key in areas with big lobby groups, such as our investigation into Irish vaping laws, published last year. For this, we conducted extensive searches of the register to examine the main players and what they were up to. Numerous tobacco companies and their representatives showed up.

You only get glimpses of information in the lobbying returns themselves, but it is enough to ask the relevant public body for records through the Freedom of Information (FOI) process.

In the case of vaping, this enabled us to report that one of Ireland’s biggest tobacco companies instructed lawyers to raise concerns over a public consultation on stricter regulation of vapes.

Asking a minister to sign a template statement

Doing this type of research can result in very interesting findings when it comes to politicians and their interaction with lobbying organisations.

This was the case back in 2021 when I was investigating a transport-related capital development, The Wayfinding Centre, which disabled people were calling a ‘white elephant’.

The training centre was estimated to cost €2.7 million when I first wrote about it, but the overall cost of the project nearly tripled to €7.8 million by the time it opened in 2024 – €3.5 million of which came from the public purse.

It was evident from the lobbying register that the National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI), which has since rebranded as Vision Ireland, had met with the then Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan about the development of the centre.

The lobbying return stated that this meeting occurred between September and December 2020.

So what happened at this meeting and did it have any impact?

I requested correspondence for the period from the summer before the meeting to mid-2021 to enure the planning period and any resulting outcomes were covered.