Coillte can ask people to give their real names and addresses if they request environmental information from the semi-state forestry company, an EU court has ruled.

According to the Court of Justice of the European Union, EU law does not require anyone to give their real name or address to request environmental information.

However at the same time EU law also gives countries the right to demand this information.

The Coillte case had come before the Court of Justice after it was referred by the High Court in Dublin.

At the core of the legal case was the fact that between March 10, 2022 to June 7, 2022, Coillte had received 130 requests for access to environmental information.

Out of these requests 97 came from anonymous applicants or applicants using fake names sometimes inspired by filmcharacters.

They were according to Coillte presented in an identical or almost identical format, without a physical address being provided.

Coillte found that many of the requests were "very similar" and the semi-state forestry company came to the conclusion that this was "part of an organised campaign engaged in for questionable motives".

It asked the applicants who had lodged the requests to confirm their identity and when Coillte did not receive this information they rejected the requests as invalid.

Court

The applicants challenged the Coillte decision and 81 of the rejection decisions were appealed to the Commissioner for Environmental Information.

The Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information examined the first 58 cases and decided that Coillte was wrong to reject those requests.

The semi-state forestry company then challenged that decision in the High Court which subsequently referred certain questions in the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Coillte

In its judgement the EU court stated that although EU law "does not require the disclosure of the actual name or current physical address of a person requesting environmental information, it does not preclude that information from being requested by the national authorities on the basis of national law".

It also stated that member states may, "in compliance with the principles of equivalence and effectiveness, require prior identification where such a requirement is justified in order to ensure the proper functioning of the procedure".

The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union does not mean the end of the matter for Coillte as the case is now set to return to the High Court in Dublin.