Righttoknow.ie Transparency/Investigative Journalism Initiative

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The people behind TheStory.ie (Gavin Sheridan and others) are currently endeavouring to set up an Irish investigative journalism/transparency organization/watchdog. IMO this is an initiative well worth supporting financially. The webpage for this is RightToKnow.ie

The people involved have already done some great work over the past few years shining light into some dark corners of Irish life (particularly via some clever use of Freedom of Information legislation). To quote from their website:

1) NAMA were defeated in the Supreme Court in 2015 on an issue directly related to its transparency and accountability, based on a request we sent in February 2010, and on lengthy submissions made by us (with the enormous work of lawyer Fred Logue advising pro bono). NAMA also lost two cases in the High Court, one of which was solely based on our direct submissions to the court.
2) The “Trichet Letters” to Brian Lenihan were ultimately released by the ECB following a three-year long appeals process initiated and pursued by us, via the ECB and the EU Ombudsman. We also were first to publish the letter Ireland sent formally seeking a bailout.
3) We were the first to obtain large datasets under FOI, starting with the expenses database of the Department of Tourism, followed by multiple expenses and expenditure databases. These databases contain line item details in the billion of euros, never before seen in publicly available data. Others have since replicated these techniques.
4) We pursued other appeals via the Information Commissioner – achieving results on the definition of personal information, and on the definition of environmental information.
5) We vigorously argued against FOI fees, in particular the upfront €15 fee. We made submissions to the Oireachtas committee during the drafting of the FOI Bill 2014, and rang the alarm when we noticed the Government trying to increase fees via a Committee Stage amendment. The Government later removed the upfront fee altogether, an important step in the right direction.
6) We scanned and published legacy reports and investigations into malfeasance and corruption, including the Beef Tribunal report, which had up to then never been available online.

This has all been done on a voluntary and, up to now, a rather ad hoc basis. They now want to organize themselves into a properly-constituted not-for-profit organization/watchdog and are looking for public support.

Similar organizations already exist in several countries:

We are inspired by the good people at The Ferret in Scotland, Dossier in Austria, Correctiv in Germany, De Correspondent in The Netherlands, Access-Info in Spain, Digital Rights Ireland, The Detail in Northern Ireland, ProPublica in the United States – and indeed we have met many of the people behind those organisations over the years.

Their wish is that many ordinary members of the public would commit to a small annual subscription (maybe €25 a year, maybe €50, even higher if one can afford it):

100 people donating €50 a year? €5,000 can help us get established and organise. And this is where we want to start.
So here is the question: are you with us? We have an initial group of people – some of the best journalists we know to help us get started, and we will be adding to this list over the coming months. Gavin Sheridan and journalist Malachy Browne are directors, and journalists Ken Foxe, Karrie Kehoe and Tom Lyons are helping us get off the ground.
If we are completely transparent about how the funds are spent (and we certainly will be), and come to escalate our efforts, could we get to 1,000 people, or higher? By way of comparison 13,064 people gave their first preference to Michael Lowry in the recent election. Can a similar number of people “vote” for watchdogs?
If you want to support us, you can join on a yearly basis. In the future we will likely fundraise around specific issues, but our priority is to build a loyal membership who support our work.

I really like what this group is trying to do. I've already signed up myself for a modest yearly subscription (was very easy to set up via stripe on the RightToKnow.ie website). We badly need more proper independent investigative journalism and transparency outfits of this type (member/subscription-funded to help safeguard their independence).