Matt Carthy TD asked the Minister for Foreign: Freedom of Information

Matt Carthy, the Sinn Féin TD for Cavan‑Monaghan, has taken a new line of questioning to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. In a written question submitted to the Oireachtas on 7 September 2026, Carthy asked the Minister to provide detailed statistics on Freedom of Information (FOI) requests received by the Department and each of its agencies from 2020 to 2025, and up to the present date in 2026. He requested the number of requests that were refused on the original decision, the number that were subject to review, how many of those reviews resulted in an amendment of the original decision, and how many subsequent appeals were lodged.

Carthy’s inquiry follows a long history of engagement with public transparency. Born in Birmingham, he entered local politics in 1999, becoming the youngest elected representative in County Cavan at that time. He grew up in Carrickmacross, studied marketing at the Dublin Institute of Technology where he founded a Sinn Féin college branch, and later served as the party’s press officer. He was Sinn Féin’s spokesman on Foreign Affairs and Defence, an MEP from 2014, and the party’s director of elections from 2016. In the 2020 general election he secured more than 16,000 votes, the highest ever for a candidate in the constituency, and is widely regarded as a strong contender for a second term.

The question reflects Carthy’s continued focus on accountability and openness in government, particularly in the area of foreign affairs. For the full text of the question and the official response, see the Oireachtas record of the 7 September 2026 session.

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