About the Annual Release
Every year since 1976, official records held by PRONI which are 30 years old have been reviewed and some made publicly available.
In September 2011 the time limit for the release changed from 30 years to 20 years. This change was phased in over 10 years, with two years’ worth of records being reviewed and released each year. The full change to the time limit was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was completed with the release of 2004 and 2005 files in December 2025.
The full list of records released in the 2025 Annual Release and the accompanying highlights list can be viewed online.
You can view our full list of annual releases and highlights lists from 1999 to 2025 on our Publications page.
Full and partial closure
Records subject to release may be closed either fully or in part only. Partial closure involves the removal of a limited number of papers from the files to make them suitable for release under FOI.
For the release of as much information as possible, redaction can be used to blank out sensitive data within individual documents to make them suitable for release.
All information which is withheld, must be kept as per the exemptions contained within the FOI Act. In most cases, the reason for extended closure was the application of section 40 which is the personal information exemption of the FOI Act. This means that personal information can't be published as this would break the Data Protection principles.
Note that any file reference which ends with an ‘A’ means that an open part of a file has had certain information partly removed or blanked out due to a FOI Exemption.
What's 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
PRONI also publishes 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