The next item on the agenda is the main item for today. Given time constraints, I propose we defer the remainder of the agenda to a further meeting. Item 6 is a motion to consider the Draft Freedom of Information Act 1997 (Prescribed Bodies) Regulations 2006. On behalf of the joint committee, I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach, Deputy Treacy, and his officials. I suggest that we invite the Minister of State to make his opening statement which will be followed by a question and answer session. Is that agreed? Agreed.
Draft Freedom of Information Act 1997 (Prescribed Bodies) Regulations 2006: Motion.
Is cúis mhór áthais dom féin agus do mo chomhghleacaithe ón Roinn Airgeadais a bheith anseo i bhur measc le freastal ar an ábhar an-tábhachtach seo. Táimid an-bhuíoch díbh gur thionóil sibh an cruinniú seo tráthnóna inniu.
I thank the Chairman and members of the joint committee for the opportunity to discuss these draft regulations, which represent the largest single extension of the Freedom of Information Act since its introduction eight years ago. The process of extending freedom of information is set out in section 3(3) of the Freedom of Information Act and is reasonably straightforward. Prior to the Minister for Finance making the necessary regulations, it is necessary that resolutions approving them in draft form are passed in each House. It is in this context that these regulations are being considered by the joint committee today.
Following their consideration by the committee, and the approval of the necessary resolution in each House, it is proposed that the regulations will take effect from 31 May 2006, thus bringing the 137 bodies and groups specified in the schedule to the regulations within the scope of the Act from that date.
Regulations to extend freedom of information, FOI, have been made on 12 occasions since the Act came into operation in April 1998, most of which have been considered by this committee. When it was introduced, the Act applied to 67 bodies, mainly in the Civil Service. ln October 1998, the Act was extended to the former health boards and to local authorities. One year later, a further large group of bodies, including voluntary hospitals and bodies dealing with people with an intellectual disability, were brought under its remit.
Bodies in the broadcasting sector came within the scope of the Act in 2000. ln 2001 and 2002, the Act was further extended to a range of public and publicly-funded bodies in the social services, health, regulatory, environment, cultural and enterprise areas and to universities, institutes of technology and colleges of education.
These latest regulations will bring to over 500 the number of bodies that come within the scope of the Act. The bodies concerned include a wide range across a variety of sectors, including each county and city enterprise board, regulatory bodies in the health sector, such as the Medical Council and An Bord Altranais, the Radiological Protection Institute, the Office of Tobacco Control, and the Family Support Agency. A total of 51 bodies under the aegis of the Department of Education and Science are being included and another 40 under the aegis of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, including each of the 35 county and city enterprise boards.
The Act is being applied to 19 bodies in the Department of Health and Children's area. Essentially, all of the bodies included in the announcement made by the Minister for Finance in October 2005 have been included in the regulations with the exception of the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner and the Labour Court. It is expected that the regulations necessary to extend FOI to these bodies will be brought forward later in the year. The draft regulations also cover two bodies, the Office of the Pensions Ombudsman and the Mental Health Commission, which have been added since the Minister's announcement.
The process of extending the Act will not end with these regulations. The Department of Finance is actively engaged with other Departments at present in a number of other bodies that remain outside the scope of the Act. While I am not in a position to say what bodies will be coming in at this stage, I am confident the Act will be extended further in the near future.
In a recent report to this committee under section 32 of the Act, the Information Commissioner welcomed plans for the extension of the Act while also drawing attention to certain bodies which remained outside the scope of the legislation. She referred in particular to the vocational education committees, the Garda Síochána, the Refugee Applications Commissioner and Refugee Appeals Tribunal, the Private Security Authority, the Central Bank and Financial Services Authority, the National Treasury Management Agency and its associated bodies, and the Residential Institutions Redress Board. These bodies were referred to again in her recently published annual report for 2005. I appreciate that members of the committee may have questions concerning these bodies so, I propose to deal with each of these in turn.
The Government has agreed in principle that the Act should be extended to vocational education committees, VECs. Given that the Government is not in favour of extending the Act to schools at this time, there will, for the purposes of the Act, be a need to disentangle the VECs from the schools within their remit. Discussions with the Department of Education and Science on this matter are at an advanced stage and it is hoped later this year to bring forward the regulations needed to apply the Act to the VECs.
Due to the need to give priority to the current change programme for the Garda Síochána, it has been decided not to extend the Act to the force at this time. It is also not proposed to extend the Act to the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. A number of concerns were raised by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform about the implications of extending the Act to these bodies and following consideration of these matters, the Government decided not to extend it to them for the foreseeable future.
The Department of Finance is in consultation with the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform with a view to bringing the Private Security Authority within the remit of the Act when the authority is fully operational. Extension of the Act to the National Treasury Management Agency, the Central Bank and the Financial Services Authority of Ireland, and their related bodies, is under consideration.
The Act is not being extended to the Residential Institutions Redress Board in view of the highly confidential nature of its work. The effectiveness of the work of the board is based on the level to which participants can be assured of the confidentiality of proceedings. Were there to be any doubt about this, the level of participation in and co-operation with the board could be adversely affected. I appreciate there are one or two other bodies that have been mentioned by the Information Commissioner and that there may be other bodies of interest to the committee. I will be happy to deal, in so far as I can today, with any questions that members may have on such bodies.
Turning to more practical issues, the application of the Act to such a large and diverse group of bodies has represented a challenge. One of our primary roles under the Act is to ensure that training and other supports are in place for compliance with the legislation. Since the announcement of the plan to extend the Act in October last, the bodies concerned have participated in a series of FOI awareness training sessions to prepare themselves for FOI implementation. FOI officers, decision makers and internal reviewers have been appointed in all bodies and formal FOI training is being undertaken by those who will be involved in the decision-making process.
Arrangements are also under way for the preparation of publications required by the Act for the collection of FOI statistics and for the representation of each of the new bodies in an appropriate FOI network to ensure that best practice in dealing with FOI requests is developed and maintained. I am confident that with the help we have been able to give, and with the benefit of the ongoing FOI supports in place, the bodies due to come under the scope of the Act will operate the legislation in the fair and impartial manner which has been a feature of the FOI Act since its introduction.
I thank the Minister of State for his statement.
I welcome the Minister of State and his officials to the committee for what will probably be a short meeting. I welcome the extension of the Freedom of Information Act to cover many bodies. Reading down the list, I, for one, see bodies I did not know existed. Therefore, I would not rush out to seek their documents under freedom of information legislation. I note that a particular category of bodies is covered, including, for example, the Further Education and Training Awards Council, the Higher Education and Training Awards Council, the National Centre for Guidance and Education, the National Centre for Technology in Ireland and so on.
However, there is a glaring omission to which the Minister of State referred in his speech. I am not satisfied with the way he dealt with the exclusion of VECs from the Act. This has been a major anomaly since the Freedom of Information Act was introduced. The Ombudsman made reference to it in her last two reports, but it has been apparent in the House for a long time. I wonder if what happened in Westmeath VEC some years ago, when we could not access documents, would have happened if documents had been available. A lot of money was wasted.
I will give a flavour of the period. The VEC had a petty cash account which at one stage was overdrawn by £900,000. I used to think petty cash accounts were used in buying the tea and biscuits for the morning break. The VEC bought a property in France, which cost close to £1 million to purchase and refurbish. It was sold recently for a gain of £5,000 on the original price. Various issues arose. One VEC officer even paid his car insurance premium through the VEC.
That the VECs are excluded is a glaring omission. I am not content with what the Minister has suggested, namely, that this is due to the close link between schools and VECs. If the Minister of State can produce governing regulations, surely it is not impossible for a man of his talents to produce the necessary regulations to ensure that, while schools might be protected, VECs would not be protected in such a way. There is a need to include them and I hope it will happen quickly.
I raised another issue at the committee previously, namely, the interpretation of freedom of information as it relates to senior officials within Departments and other organisations. The committee previously discussed the operation of the Committee for Performance Awards which makes awards to county managers and directors of services within county councils. Like me, the Minister of State may have lost touch with local authorities to some extent. Therefore, I will explain how the process works. At the beginning of each year the manager writes to the Committee for Performance Awards to outline the goals he or she will set and what he or she intends to achieve. At the end of the year he or she writes to tell the Committee for Performance Awards that the staff in his or her outfit have been good boys and girls because they have achieved all the goals set. The Committee for Performance Awards then sits in an august chamber and discusses the document before signing off on it and making awards which are substantial, averaging approximately €12,000 each per year.
Several questions arise. First, the body which makes the award does not discuss it with anyone in County Westmeath, Galway or elsewhere with a view to ascertaining how the council conducted its business or whether it did a good job. It does not talk to county councillors or esteemed representatives such as ourselves. It makes the award without any committee member moving from its offices. The strange point is that the Committee for Performance Awards is covered under the Freedom of Information Act but one will not receive information because it points too directly at people. A previous case was cited where Secretaries General of Departments could be identified. These cases are much the same. Therefore, individuals cannot be fingered and one cannot see what they are doing.
I am not interested in how much money managers receive by way of bonus payments. However, the process of how they set targets and how they are adjudicated is of serious interest to me and should be of interest to taxpayers. We are paying millions of euro through that system. The Chairman will understand if I have a bee in my bonnet in this regard. The Minster of State should tell the committee how quickly he will include the VECs. This is urgently needed.
The Minister of State referred to the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, in respect of which action is also needed. There have been leaks of information to the press with regard to certain officers having an abysmal record in granting status to refugees and other officers having a different record. We need to be able to access this information and assess and adjudicate on it properly. In this light, it is important to extend the Freedom of Information Act to these bodies also.
As a member of County Westmeath VEC, the Deputy was a member of an interesting body——
I was never a member of the body, unfortunately. I would have been on the straight and narrow if I was.
The Deputy lived in its functional area.
The Minister of State's people were in command.
I do not understand that reference.
The Minister of State does understand it.
My people were simple people from the west. We never migrated to the midlands.
I was referring to his confederates in the Soldiers of Destiny.
If the Soldiers of Destiny were in charge, there was progress. The Deputy was certainly a member of an interesting body. I note it made an acquisition in an international location in Europe and is obviously committed to the European project. I was pleased it did not lose money and that it was transposed away from the system——
The Minister of State should stop digging.
It made a small positive sum.
The Minister of State is referring to a matter that is ultra vires in the first place.
As one who was proud to serve on a VEC for six years and who has served 24 years in public life, the VEC was the best statutory body on which I ever sat. It was an excellent, well run body with a strict operation.
I agree with Deputy McGrath that it is critically important that we introduce the regulations currently being prepared. When they are almost complete, we hope to consult the committee and obtain its expertise, advice, guidance and counsel. We then hope to have the regulations ratified and brought into operation in the second half of this year. Progress has been made. We are at one with the committee in what it wants to achieve. Members should be assured that we will do our utmost to achieve it.
I am well acquainted with my local authority and the local authorities within my functional area but I have no knowledge of the performance and verification groups. From what the Deputy has said, it seems a simple process of achieving standards and receiving the emoluments or bonuses available. I do not know anything about it but I note the Deputy's comments.
Virtually every council receives the same or a similar award. It is strange that the process is not bell-shaped, with some projects being good and some not so good.
They are subject to freedom of information, which the Deputy admitted.
The freedom of information requests were refused.
I note that point. I will reconsider the matter, although I cannot give any commitments in that regard.
The Deputy referred to the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. Serious reservations have been expressed by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform in regard to possible breaches of confidentiality obligations under refugee law if the Freedom of Information Act is extended to the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. The information held by both bodies is personal, on the applicants in the main. It is made available as a matter of course or routinely to applicants by both offices. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has advised that confidentiality is one of the key factors in asylum applications. As such, any possibility that information provided by asylum applicants would not remain confidential could have significant detrimental effects on the integrity of the asylum determination system. The organs of the determination process are independent of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in the discharge of their functions, which is also an indication of the importance attached to maintaining the integrity of the system in Ireland.
The Government regards an efficient asylum process as a priority and is committed to the asylum strategy which has greatly speeded up processing over the last number of years. It is considered that the channelling of resources away from the core work of these bodies would be detrimental to achieving this objective. Accordingly, the Government has decided not to extend FOI to these bodies in the foreseeable future. Information is already made available to namely applicants for refugee status and to other parties under the Refugee Act 1996, namely, their solicitors and others. I trust this puts the matter in context.
Would the Minister of State accept release if the applicant agreed to having it released? There are many situations in hearings and tribunals where there is an option in the legislation that it shall not be made public except with the agreement of the applicant.
Obviously one considers the bodies' and the applicants' views. It is something that could be considered and we may look at it.
Will the Minister of State just agree it? Never mind the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.
That is not possible. I do not have the faculty, facility or the competence at this remove to agree it. It would be unfair of me to presume that which is in the charge of a much more powerful Minister.
Perhaps the Minister of State does not have the competence, but he certainly has the confidence.
The FOI Act has to be applied as a whole to the entire operation. It must go through the gamut and there can be no sectional or part information. It is either applied or not. The question of the release on one side for FOI is somewhat different.
Perhaps the Act could be amended to allow for change or for more flexibility to cover the instance articulated.
With regard to the incremental manner in which bodies are added to the Schedule, there is a public perception that the Act is universal except where there are bodies excluded. That is how it should be. A strong argument should be made as to why a body is not covered. Apart from anything else, it adds to the workload, and it makes it very confusing to have one list in one year and another the next year. The number of bodies started at 90, then rose to 137. The number has increased continually since the Act was passed. That is the wrong way to do things. It should be the reverse, where one automatically assumes a body is included unless there is an argument for excluding it.
I want to make a point about the Residential Institutions Redress Board. Last year I attended an event where archivists were talking of difficulties and needs in the areas in which they work. An interesting speaker was Mary Raftery, who produced the programme "States of Fear". She talked of the difficulty she and others had in getting information to make that very valuable contribution to this topical issue.
I subsequently asked a parliamentary question about this matter. The information related to the dialogue between the State and the institutions, not naming individuals. I asked if that information could be made more available and was told the redress board was sitting and that because the material was in active use, it would not be possible to provide it.
I asked a fairly similar question with regard to records in the UK archives relating to Ireland and was told the information could be given in various formats by means of information technology. It will be possible for people to see the information in the simplest formats, even by means of photocopiers. I do not understand why there is such a resistance to opening up the archives. Great offence could be caused in the future if the redress board finishes its work and further information then becomes available by opening up these archives in a more comprehensive manner. That should be considered. I do not accept the ruling on the redress board.
Deputy Murphy has raised a number of interesting points but we must see how the Freedom of Information Act has evolved. There has been a major opening up of information in various agencies and Departments and the figures now show that media requests are fewer than personal requests. The situation is changing, and Departments and agencies are more amenable to making information available quickly to those to whom they deem the information is relevant.
It does not cost anything.
No. The preferred method for achieving FOI coverage for public bodies is by regulations made by the Minister for Finance under section 3 of the Freedom of Information Act 1997. However, in certain exceptional cases, notably the HSE, the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel has agreed that the legislation should provide for the inclusion of a particular body in the first Schedule of the FOI Act. This is to ensure that functions of public bodies which are already subject to the FOI do not fall out of coverage, even for a short period when functions are being transferred to a new body. In any event, the Minister for Finance aims to bring all new public bodies within the remit of the Freedom of Information Act as quickly as possible following their establishment, where it is appropriate to do so. Successive Ministers and Governments will propose to the Oireachtas to re-establish particular agencies and bodies. These structures and systems have to be graded. It would not be possible to have an FOI impact on those bodies immediately on their creation. There would have to be an evolutionary process to allow them a certain lead-in and development time and a programme of activity before they would be able to deal with FOI. That lead-in time has to be taken into account in a common sense and a logical, practical approach.
I have already spoken of a number of bodies for which it has been decided that the extension of FOI is not appropriate at present. There may also be bodies for whom full FOI extension is not appropriate and for whom a partial extension of the Act may be considered. As I said earlier, the Act was set up by the Oireachtas, which decided to handle it in this incremental way. The view of the Oireachtas at the time was that this was the way it should be done. We are fulfilling the requirements of the Oireachtas in the initial Act and the work we are doing this evening is part of that.
Deputy Murphy and others spoke of the Residential Institutions Redress Board, a very sensitive and difficult area, and a sad one too when one looks at it in a broad way. That board is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act and there are no plans to bring this body within the remit of the Act in view of the nature of its activities.
The critical factor in deciding that the board should remain outside FOI was the need to guarantee confidentiality. The Redress Board has now been operational for a number of years and the records received by it to date would have been given to it on the understanding that the protections provided in section 28 of the Act establishing the board would apply to these records and statements. The majority of these records would have been of a highly sensitive and very personal nature. The purpose of the prohibition on the disclosure of information under section 28 of the Residential Institutions Redress Act is twofold: first to protect the victims, many of whom will not want their experience or their application to the Redress Board to be disclosed, and second, to take into account that the Redress Board does not make findings of fault in respect of any particular case, but merely assesses if the injury is consistent with abuse having occurred.
Many applications to the Redress Board will contain allegations against named individuals, and if the content of the applications were to become public knowledge, the perception could be that the allegations were proven by the fact that the Redress Board decided to award compensation. If individual cases were to be dealt with in public or outcomes disclosed, the good name of persons against whom allegations are made but in respect of whom there has not been a finding of fact or guilt by the board would be compromised. Matters would quickly end up being referred to the courts. This would undermine the effective operation of the scheme.
In addition, individuals who were involved in the hearings conducted by the confidential committee of the board agreed to get involved on the understanding that this section would apply to records on their personal experiences. Records in the possession of the Department of Education and Science on industrial and reformatory schools which have been provided for the commission as part of its investigation will continue to be treated in the normal manner with regard to requests from researchers and historians. Subsections (7) and (8) of section 27 of the Residential Institutions Redress Act provide that prior to their dissolution, the relevant bodies will make decisions regarding records held by them. The Department of Education and Science is of the opinion that this is the appropriate method by which the availability of these records can be fully considered.
I appreciate the difficulties mentioned by Deputy Catherine Murphy but a balance must be achieved in maintaining the level of confidentiality required by the board for participants and allowing access to information. Personal records sought under freedom of information legislation from the Department of Education and Science are dealt with under the Act.
I was not looking for the information to be given by the redress board in a public fashion. As I understand it is confidential, I would not seek this. I refer to the records held by the Department of Education and Science that have been given to the redress board for use by it. They relate to the relationship between the State and the institutions, not necessarily individuals within them. That is the set of records to which I refer. I thought they would have been available under the 30 year rule in the National Archives, even prior to the establishment of the redress board. That did not happen because the National Archives has limited space. That is one of the reasons I was given.
I understand the Deputy's point. The records were available in the Department. They were transferred to the redress board and have to be dealt with under the Act which established the board. While the board is sitting, they are exempt under the Act during the deliberative process. It is a matter for the board, when it concludes its business, to decide what will happen to them. A decision will have to be taken on their archival use once the board has decided what it will do with them.
I agree with the proposal to extend the Freedom of Information Act to the VECs. I am conscious of the extraordinary good work done by them over many years. Some practices in different counties leave something to be desired. There was a situation in my county where filling the chair and vice-chair was not even put on the agenda for a number of years. For political purposes, it was done behind closed doors. That practice is unacceptable. If more information was available, such practices would be stamped out. Any activity that brings a public body into disrepute is not good for the public body or the activity with which it is concerned.
With regard to county councils, there is a broader agenda concerning public and civil servants. County managers and county executives perform way beyond their duty. The level of customer friendly activity at local authority level, particularly at executive level, in the counties with which I have dealt goes far beyond what would be required of a public or civil servant. They earn every shilling they receive under benchmarking. There is an agenda being promoted, to some extent by Deputy McGrath's party, that neither public nor civil servants are entitled to benchmarking and that it should constantly be questioned. I disagree. We are fortunate to have our civil and public servants and, as I have said many times previously, they are entitled to what they get. They should not be sniped at in the way they are and have been recently.
Lest words be put in my mouth, I did not say that.
I was impressed by the Minister of State's phrase "the Oireachtas in its wisdom". The amendment to the 1997 Act was made with the wisdom of barely more than half the Oireachtas because the other half opposed it.
There was a majority.
It was a majority of bodies but perhaps not a majority of wisdom. I have looked at a number of recent responses from various Departments. Therefore, I will speak in general terms rather than outline a situation. One is given a list of documentation dealing with the issue in question. When a person makes a freedom of information request, he or she is given, for example, 200 documents, of which 150 are blacked out. I saw two instances recently where the total amount of documentation received from the Department on foot of two requests was simply the list of parliamentary questions answered in the meantime. Every other document was considered to be unacceptable. I forget the phrase used but it was to the effect that the document was part of the decision-making process or was under consideration for decision.
When this legislation was being debated, I agreed, in my wisdom, that it was fair and correct that the Department should not be required to produce information crucial to the decision-making process. However, the process does not extend to every piece of information taken into consideration when making the decision. There was a clear understanding of the process. In other words, the Minister might have documentation after consultation with 50 groups which he will examine before coming to a decision. I accept that the way he might take material from that documentation to produce the basis of the decision might well be covered by the decision-making process but I do not accept that all the contributions made to the Department should be covered. Am I making my position clear?
I understand.
Let us say the Minister seeks the views of 20 bodies and they send the information to the Minister. That is public information, unless there is some reason to allow the Minister claim confidentiality. There might well be a reason. I have always put certain qualifications on transparency. Departments are entitled to make their decisions with a certain level of confidentiality, which should be respected. However, it is now being used in the case of every document sitting in a file because a decision has still not been made which might make reference to some of the documents in it.
With regard to the value for money audit, I did not have a problem with a symbolic amount accompanying every request for information because I saw how Departments were being destroyed in dealing with 200 or 250 requests for information from single individuals. It was clogging up the Departments. However, if people are only going to get back parliamentary questions, they should get their money back as well.
The Minister of State will reply that there is an appeal process to the Information Commissioner. I accept that, but this is where the system falls. One of the problems in Irish life is that people take everything to the limit. It should not be necessary to make an appeal if something should be dealt with at the lowest level in a Department. That is a long lead-in period. Would the Department be prepared to prepare a protocol to deal with issues like the one I mentioned? It could then be circulated to all the Departments and bodies within the remit of the Act and ensure certain matters were taken into consideration. There is no uniform approach to the way requests for information are dealt with in Departments. Some begin with the view that they should make as much information as possible available. Others begin with an oppositional stance by giving as little information as possible so as to meet in the middle. There needs to be a protocol about what was comprehended and intended by the legislation that allows a Department or nominated body to hold information on the basis that it is still part of a decision-making process.
I cannot comment on the case to which the Senator referred.
I did not mention a case deliberately.
The Senator referred to a particular situation pertaining to an information request. There were two parts to it. I cannot comment on the case because I do not have the details. The Act is clear in that there must be a schedule of records. There is no exemption for the Act to be applied. It is all or nothing. If one is not happy, one can appeal. There is a user network, a group of operations in the system, which considers this issue all the time. Perhaps a protocol could be developed. I will ask the officials to examine the feasibility of such a development.
They are great. I know they are trained and tutored like good civil servants to give the Minister of State that response. I support the idea that we cannot give out all information.
I, too, support that fully.
I am not looking for a note given to a Minister when making a decision. I am looking for the basic documentation. There is no reason it cannot be made available. For example, a group sends documentation to a Department as part of a consultation process. The Department will not make that documentation available because it will have consultations on it before it comes to a decision. However, I am arguing that the baseline information can be used. For us to share the information, that should be available. My argument is that information used in the decision-making process should not be shared; the information on which the decision is made should be shared.
The Senator is arguing that if 97 documents are submitted on a particular project where a decision is to be made, the hard-core documents, critical to the final conclusion, could be retained but the others could be made available.
Exactly. I understand part of a document could be taken to form the core of a decision-making process and it may not be made available until after the decision is made. Recently, I came across a situation where documents dated back to 1999 but the decision still had not been made. I am interested in why the decision was delayed. Not only do I not know what delayed the decision, I do not even know what documents were available leading to the Minister to conclude that he or she could not make a decision.
Was it a Department or State agency?
A Department.
I would have thought that.
I know Mr. Gallagher will give the best advice to the Minister of State. I know he is saying to him, as I speak, "Yes, definitely I agree with Senator O'Toole and we should do this immediately."
What has been said to me is that we use upgrading and up-skilling of those involved in the delivery of the process to ensure a uniform message. There should be reasonableness at all times on the requests being made.
I surrender.
Senator O'Toole has never surrendered so easily before.
The Senator is referring to information that forms part of the deliberative process being made available before the process is completed.
No.
The Senator is trying to make two categories of information available.
I am looking for the information on which the deliberative process is based.
It is a fine line
It is not. The first step is to identify the problem. The second is to put all the information to do with the problem together. There are three more steps before it is solved. I just want information on the first two steps but I know I am getting nowhere.
I thank the Minister of State for his contribution.