Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 6 Apr 2000

Vol. 162 No. 23

Freedom of Information Act, 1997: Statements.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Cullen)

This is very nearly an anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act. The Free dom of Information Bill was a Seanad Bill and was passed in this House three years ago this Monday. Individual Senators and the House in general played a very important part in shaping the Act as passed. I understand that recently a seminar in the law department in UCC was shown the video recording of the Seanad Committee Stage debate on the Freedom of Information Act as an illustration of the way in which a Bill is shaped by the contribution of individual Members as it passes through the Oireachtas, an illustration of democracy in action. It seems fitting that this anniversary discussion should take place in the Seanad, and I thank the Seanad for initiating this morning's proceedings on the Freedom of Information Act.

If the Freedom of Information Act was conceived in this House three years ago, it was born on the day it commenced, one year later – the Freedom of Information Act applied to the whole Civil Service from April 1998. Six months later the Act took effect in relation to health boards and local authorities. In October 1999 a further large group of public bodies, including in particular voluntary hospitals and bodies dealing with people with an intellectual disability, were brought into the remit of the Act. Even excluding the numerous smaller local authorities, UDCs and town commissioners, there are now in the order of 170 public bodies within the remit of the Freedom of Information Act. The Government has approved a further ambitious programme of extensions of the Act for the next year and a half or so, and I will discuss this shortly.

Up to the end of 1999, 20 months into the operation of the Act, there had been more than 15,000 freedom of information requests to the various public bodies, 11,000 of which were in 1999, and there is no sign of any fall-off in the numbers of requests. In the first two months of this year there were more than 1,300 additional requests to the Civil Service alone and I expect that when figures are available for the end of April, they will show a cumulative total of more than 19,000 requests to date.

Moreover, and to quote a study from another jurisdiction:

Sheer volume is not the sole test . . . of the Act's usefulness. Simply by existing, the legislation is the cause of uncounted informal releases of information.

That is a point that should not be underestimated by any of us. This is clearly the case in Ireland also. Many institutions are now releasing, on an informal administrative basis, information which would previously not have been readily available. In the health boards in particular I understand that probably three quarters of requests for access to personal records are dealt with informally and are not required to go through the full freedom of information process. That is something I welcome. Administrators throughout the public service are finding that while the Freedom of Information Act provides a useful set of criteria which can be applied in deciding whether to release documents likely to be sensitive, there are many documents which clearly can be given out entirely outside the freedom of information framework.

The Act is loosely based on similar legislation in other jurisdictions, particularly Australia. The Australian central Government experience is that more than 90 per cent of requests are thought to be from personal requesters, people seeking information on file about themselves. By contrast, just under half of requests in Ireland are for personal information, with the remainder being for non-personal – our experience in this regard seems to be more in line with that of Canada. The proportion of personal requests varies between sectors – nearly 80 per cent of requests in the health boards are for personal information, while the proportion in the local authorities is only about one in three. As regards the type of requester, the figures are as follows: Members of the Oireachtas make up about 3 per cent of requests received; business accounts for 11 per cent of requests; staff members account for 12 per cent of requests; journalists are heavy users of the Act, accounting for about 15 per cent of requests; and other members of the public make the remaining 60 per cent of requests which are largely for personal information.

The figures also show that requesters are successful in using the Act to gain access to official information. About 80 per cent of requests are granted in whole or in part and only a small proportion of requests are referred for internal review. Only about one in 20 requests received so far have been referred to the information commissioner for review. We should not be complacent, but this seems to represent a good level of client satisfaction with the Act.

The House will agree that the receipt of probably 19,000 requests in the first two years of operation, together with the continuing process of extending the Act to new bodies, represents a solid start to the process conceived in this House three years ago.

Most users of the Act make a single freedom of information request on an issue of particular interest to themselves, but there are some users who have made regular use of the Act's provisions. Occasionally, this has been taken to extremes – one individual has made more than 200 requests as well as quite a few appeals to the information commissioner. Processing of this one person's requests in one Department cost more than £100,000 in a single year, and he had made requests to other Departments also. This practice undermines confidence in the freedom of information system, ties up public resources and interferes with the business of public bodies, to the detriment of their clients and other freedom of information users. This kind of thing seems to be an abuse of the system and we have to consider how the system can be changed to avoid recurrences.

As against this, there are heavy users of the Act whose requests cannot in any sense be seen to be an abuse. A solicitor has been using the Act to get important personal information on behalf of clients and a Member of the Oireachtas has used it regularly, for example, to inform himself on policy issues. At least one person has sought to exploit the commercial possibilities arising out of the Act by, in effect, selling on the information obtained under the Act.

The use of the Act by certain journalists and newspapers has been striking. Of the approximately 11,000 requests received by Civil Service bodies in the period to the end of 1999, 1,200 were accounted for by just three newspapers and the top five journalistic requesters accounted for about 600 requests between them. Journalists generally appear to be using the Act more and with greater sophistication and I understand that some editors are pressing their staff to make greater use of the Act. Use of the Freedom of Information Act is now also taught as part of some journalism courses. A few of the stories published on foot of release of information under the Freedom of Information Act have been overly sensationalised, but this is perhaps the cost that a mature democracy must bear in order that the press is in a position to fulfil its genuinely important social role of ensuring that an educated populace has constant access to information about events and developments in our society. The FOI Act could not be successful in promoting greater transparency in Government if journalists were not prepared to use the Act to obtain and disseminate information about the workings of Government. Moreover, the extensive use of the Act by journalists also helps to spread awareness of the Act among members of the public.

Of course, the fees recouped from journalists and other requesters amount to only a small proportion of the cost of processing their FOI requests, and this is as it should be. One politician abroad called low-cost FOI access "an explicit subsidy" for the media and others, and I suppose that is one way of looking at it, but it is no bad thing to subsidise the process of ensuring that citizens are educated and informed about their public administration. However, there is a tendency for some requesters to send in large trawling requests, knowing that, whatever the cost to the public body, the cost to themselves is likely to be minimal.

There are also indications that the vulnerability of public bodies to disruption caused by other possible misuses of the Act is becoming known. One public body has, for example, received in excess of 1,000 FOI requests, all for the same information. Clearly, this caused considerable disruption to the public body concerned, which took the sensible step of simply packaging the material and making it available to anyone who wished to see it. However, there were ways in which a determined group of people could have ensured that such requests would be even more disruptive. I do not wish to go into those in public forum for obvious reasons, but it is clear that some steps should be taken to protect the Act from inappropriate uses.

I want to be emphatic about the extent to which the Government is committed to the FOI Act. We must not discourage responsible use of the FOI Act, or put arbitrary limits on the amount of responsible use by any individual, but those who make multiple requests should bear in mind the comment of the Information Commissioner that "requesters who are heavy users of the Act, and incidentally who may benefit considerably from the rights conferred by it, have a corresponding responsibility to act reasonably in relation to the processing of their requests by public bodies". Heavy usage of the Act by individuals is something other jurisdictions, such Australia and Canada, have experienced with similar legislation.

As I mentioned earlier, the Government has decided on an ambitious programme of further extensions of the Act, subject of course to Oireachtas approval. RTÉ and TG4 will come into the FOI net on 1 May, 21 October will see it applicable to a number of other non-commercial State bodies as well as agencies providing services to person with a physical disability, in January 2001 we will bring various bodies in the enterprise sector with its remit and the universities and certain other colleges will be brought into the net by July 2001 – the details in this sector have yet to be finalised.

This programme of extension will require structural and organisational arrangements in the new bodies which parallel those in place in the bodies which are within the FOI remit already. For example, our initial estimate is that between 1,500 and 2,000 man days of external training will need to be delivered in the next 18 months or so to satisfy the needs of the new bodies and the ongoing needs of existing FOI public bodies, plus a great deal of internally delivered basic awareness training. My Department, each of the parent Departments concerned and the bodies themselves are already working on the necessary preparations.

We trained in the region of 15,000 people in the initial phases of the Act to prepare many of the Departments which were coming within the remit of the FOI Act. This made an enormous contribution to the positive working of the Act, from the point of view of the requester, the Departments and the individuals charged with the responsibility of operating the FOI requests. Therefore, it is vital that the new bodies coming within the remit of the FOI Act take on board the need for extensive training, which has worked so well to date.

I should mention, in particular, RTÉ and TG4, which are to come within the remit of the Act from 1 May. The main thing that is different about the extension to RTÉ is that it is not intended to cover the journalistic, editorial and programme functions of RTÉ. Senators will understand the sensitivities that surround journalists' notes, videotapes of certain events and so forth – sometimes these issues have had to be dealt with in the courts. However, the management and administration of RTÉ is to be fully comprehended within the Act, and I commend RTÉ on the positive and active approach it has taken to its preparations to date.

The Civil Service Users Network is a group of freedom of information officers in Departments which exists to co-ordinate the response of these Departments to common requests and to allow for an exchange of information and experience. It is chaired by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, and its focus is on practical administrative issues rather than on policy. It recently produced a report focusing on administrative and procedural arrangements for the implementation of FOI legislation and suggested a significant number of technical improvements with a view to benefiting requesters and public bodies, by allowing smoother processing of requests.

The Taoiseach undertook to have the report of the CSUN considered by appropriate Oireachtas committees, and recently I met with the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service as well as with the all-party Oireachtas committee on the strategic management initiative, in that regard. The report has, of course, been laid before both Houses, and I have brought copies of my speaking note for my appearance at the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service should Senators be interested.

One of the key issues which was addressed by the CSUN report was the activities of a small number of repeat requesters, some of the activities of whom I discussed earlier in this presentation. The structure of the Act, which is so strongly focused on the rights of the individual requester, did not take sufficiently into account the potential for individuals to use multiple requests in a manner which would cause enormous disruption to public bodies.

As well as dealing also with a number of relatively minor technical issues, the CSUN report addressed the issue of charges. There have been complaints about a lack of transparency in the charging regime which operates under the Act, and I must admit that public bodies have not been implementing it in a consistent way. This is because different record keeping systems and practices and differing administrative practices across public bodies mean that the time taken to access records and the systems for charging for that access can differ considerably. The report suggests a battery of limited adjustments to the Act aimed at dealing with these issues while min imising the impact on the ordinary user, including limiting the number of requests which any one requester may make, adjusting the charging regime and strengthening the administrative exemptions under the Act, to deal with misuse.

I should perhaps mention one recommendation of the CSUN report, in particular – that there would be a small basic charge for processing an FOI request but that the first hour of time taken for search and retrieval of the relevant records would be free to the requester. I see some logic to the suggestion of a small basic fee. A small charge – say £5 or £10 – will often represent only a tiny fraction of the cost of processing a request and would not deter the person who had a genuine need for access to particular documents. However, it might make the person, who indiscriminately makes 15 or 20 requests at once, give some thought to the costs involved.

However, I have some concerns about the basic charge idea. In particular, I do not think that personal requesters, that is, people who only want access to their own records, should be required to pay for an FOI request, and I am sure Senators would agree with me. The CSUN suggests that social welfare records would be available free but I think that unless a person seeking personal information is making multiple requests to any public body, they should not be charged an initial fee. Clearly, Oireachtas Members acting in the course of their business as public representatives should not be charged this fee. Moreover, if there is to be an up-front fee for FOI requests, we might offset this by giving up to, for instance, two hours search and retrieval time for free – the report suggests only one hour. Most users will not be making multiple requests and a couple of hours of public service time is not too much to give.

Some of the CSUN recommendations could only be addressed by way of amending legislation. At present, there has been no decision on such legislation – I wanted to hear the views of Oireachtas Members before making a proposal to Government – but I hope that the House will see, from the extensive extension programme and my comments today, that the Government is committed to freedom of information and making the FOI Act work efficiently and effectively in the public interest. I will be most interested to hear the statements of Senators today.

Mr. J. Doyle

I wish to share my time with Senator O'Dowd.

An Cathaoirleach

Is that agreed? Agreed.

Mr. J. Doyle

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Cullen, to the House. This is the anniversary of the passing of the Act but it is also an opportunity time to debate the matter because the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service has set up a sub-committee to consider the draft regulations dealing with certain techni cal aspects of the Act and to report on the network of freedom of information officers in the Civil Service. The committee will consider a draft report on the regulations, extending the remit of the Freedom of Information Act to certain public bodies such as the Courts Service, the Equality Authority, the Ordnance Survey and the three new health boards which were established on 1 March under the auspices of the Eastern Regional Health Authority.

I understand the Eastern Regional Health Authority is a health board within the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act and will therefore come under the Act in the same way as existing health boards. However, the new health boards in the eastern region are technically speaking not covered by the Act and I will recommend to the committee that regulations be made to bring their functions within its remit.

Since the Act was introduced on 21 April 1998 it has been heavily used by the public, journalists, business people, politicians and staff of public bodies. The figures the Minister gave in his speech in this regard are very interesting. In the past 20 months there have been more than 15,000 requests to public bodies under the Freedom of Information Act, excluding those bodies which came under the provisions of the Act since October 1999. One of the most interesting things is that half the requests were for personal information which varies between sectors. The figures show that those who make requests are successful in using the Act to gain access to official information. About 80 per cent of requests are granted in whole or in part and only a small proportion of them are referred for internal review. It is interesting to note that only one in 20 requests received so far have been referred to the Information Commissioner for review. The 15,000 requests made to date and the continuing process of extending the Act represents a very commendable start to the process of ensuring citizens are able to enjoy the rights to which they are entitled under the Act.

The Minister touched on one of the real problems in relation to the Act and one of the key issues which if not addressed could lead to the erosion of confidence in the legislation to the detriment of citizens and public bodies, namely, the small number of multiple requests. There is no problem under the Act with making repeat requests. Neither should there be a problem in this regard as often the information a citizen requires will necessitate more than one request to more than one public body. However, the structure of the Act, which is so strongly focused on the rights of individuals who make requests, does not take into account the potential for individuals to use multiple requests in a manner which will cause enormous disruption to public bodies. As the Minister said, it has cost one public body almost £100,000 in one year.

Mr. Cullen

For the information of the Senator regarding the new health boards, the regulations have already been signed.

Mr. J. Doyle

I thank the Minister for that information.

Apart from the direct financial cost, this action distracts the attention of officials from important work and reduces the resources available for clients.

I note the Information Commissioner has stated that unreasonable and unco-operative behaviour by a requester in relation to the processing of a large number of requests made by him or her may justifiably lead to the conclusion that certain if not all the requests on hand from the requester are frivolous or vexatious.

I fully accept the CSUN report that some measures must be taken to protect the Act from inappropriate use. They recommend a system of charges. I have no difficulty in this regard, but I am against charges been applied to requests for personal information. Those who wish to access their own records should not be required to pay a fee. Also, the social welfare records should be freely available and, of course, Members of the Oireachtas should have use of the Act free of charge in carrying out their duties are public representatives.

I welcome the statements, and as a Member of the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service I look forward to dealing with the issues referred to it as I want to see the Act protected and extended.

Mr. O'Dowd

I welcome the Minister. This is a very important debate. Some of the points have been very well made, while I profoundly disagree with others. The idea under the Freedom of Information Act is to have transparency and openness in political and administrative dealings with the public. The Act received the support of the Oireachtas. In the Civil Service and public service it received a varied and differing response. From my experience as a Member of the Oireachtas I have found the response of some Departments to be excellent and first class, with no problems or difficulties. They produce the information as quickly as possible, often without taking the full administrative period open to them. This is not the case with other Departments, and I am concerned by the difference in response to requests from Members of the Oireachtas.

On occasion one would think one was dealing with the KGB or very privileged information. Once I received pages with one line of type and the rest blanked out in relation to a very simple request which asked why the Government increased the charges for the drugs scheme from £32 to £42. I received reams of paper and the request is now being appealed to the Information Commissioner. The Ministers should lay down clear criteria for their Departments and I wel come the fact that the freedom of information officers are meeting as a group. Ministers must take control and make it very clear that if they are in favour of information being released then it should be released.

I was told by the Department of Health and Children that it was releasing information, but somebody came between the decision maker and the information and I still have not received it. This is wrong and I do not accept it. Therefore, the standards are not uniform. In this case the Minister's office had no difficulty in providing the information, but administratively the Department had difficulties resulting in a long wrangle with which I am not happy. Politicians, if they are in favour of the Act, should ensure much more efficient operation in the hands of their officials.

There are differences between Departments in terms of charges. The Department of the Environment and Local Government wanted to charge me for information. They could not understand that the Departments of Health and Children and Public Enterprise and the office of the Tánaiste had no problem in terms of charges when I pointed this out. Not alone this, but the information was delivered by a courier who told me he was asked not to hand over the information until he received payment. I felt bad about the fact the courier was given these instructions. I was seeking information on waste management strategies and meetings between the Minister and the county managers' association. The response was over the top.

I agree with the Minister that Oireachtas Members should not be charged, within reason. If the information relates to a Member's county, area of expertise or knowledge or a particular debate, and is not being abused but is used for the purposes of debate, it is reasonable that the information should be provided free of charge. If Members are not charged for any request then others might use them to get information and some of the extreme abuse which was talked about could creep in. It is ridiculous that Members of the Oireachtas cannot get information on matters of clear and urgent importance to their communities without paying £100.

While I acknowledge that many civil and public servants work in the spirit of the Act and do not refer only to the technical and legal aspects of it, 500 cases are still on appeal to the Information Commissioner, of which 48 have been on appeal since 1998. It is fine to be able to obtain information about one's social welfare and pension entitlements, for example, but if one is trying to get at something fundamental and a Department will not release the relevant information, there is a difficulty. Currently, more than 10 per cent of people must wait two years for a decision from the Information Commissioner. That is not good enough and is not acceptable. There is procrastination on this issue.

Some months ago we agreed, through a resolution of the Houses, that the office of the Infor mation Commissioner would be given three or four extra staff but they have not yet been employed. The jobs have not even been advertised. I understand the probability is that they will be advertised on 14 June, but that is not good enough. The backlog of requests involves key fundamental decisions and it is taking far too long to expedite them. I do not blame the Information Commissioner but if we are serious about providing information, it must be current, and it should not be provided next year or the year after. To have to wait two years is utterly and totally unacceptable because the purpose of the Act is to provide current, important and useful information which means something.

Some civil servants are delaying requests by not giving a response until the expiry date for a reply is reached. They know that if they turn down a controversial request it could be two years before it sees the light of day. Decisions that they take, and for which Ministers are responsible, are hidden in the system. Much work needs to be done in this area and more action is needed.

The information officers, whether they are employed by Departments, health boards or local authorities, are positive and constructive. Everyone with whom I have dealt has been on the ball and been on the side of the person seeking the information. They approach it from the point of view of how they can obtain the information and how quickly they can do so. They are well trained and focused. I get the impression that they spend a great deal of time fighting with officials in Departments as they attempt to obtain the information more quickly. They are agents of change and are doing a very good job. However, some people still lurk in our administrative system who feel that they are the only ones entitled to the information and can make decisions and that nobody else is entitled to know or be a party to the decision-making process.

Replies to FOI applications should make sense. The reply provided by the body concerned should outline not just the correspondence but meetings, telephones calls and other contacts that are involved. It is not good enough to be given a half complete story. It should make sense from beginning to end. It seems that when FOI requests are made to some Departments, other Departments are contacted and there is no logical sequence to the information that is provided. There are gaps and when one asks to have them filled no further information is provided. Telephone calls are made and other people are contacted but records clearly are not kept. I have no doubt that the information officers release all the information they receive as they are required to do by law, but other contacts are made about which people are not informed. That is a critical issue and I ask the Minister of State to address it.

We are entitled to know everything that goes on in Departments in the interest of transparency and openness. The more open they are, the more the decision-making process comes under the public spotlight and as a result people have more confidence in it. Departments have nothing to fear but they feel that they have and that mindset must change. For example, making Members' salaries and expenses public is positive and healthy because people are entitled to know. The public, officials and decision makers have nothing to fear from the Act and there should be more progress in this regard.

The attitude that pertained in the Civil Service 30 or 40 years ago has changed and it is also changing in local government. The Act is cleaning up the cobwebs in the corners of decision making and is letting in the light. It also makes civil servants and politicians who are involved in making decisions aware that there is no hiding place and that they may as well inform people about what is happening. While the operation of the Act has been extremely successful, as evidenced by the thousands of requests which have been made, critical decisions have been sent for appeal and will not see the light of the day for a long time because of the lack of staff in the Information Commission office. I am not happy about that and do not accept that that should be the case.

There is a difficulty with not making a broad request. For example, if one seeks all the information relating to a specific decision, but does not include the words "all the information in relation to this decision", the Department will ask for the request to be narrowed down. Because one does not know what was involved in reaching the decision, one must make a request which will result in the provision of more information than one wants at the end of the day. It is good that broad queries are made because it means that applicants are covered for any further information that they may request. However, they must assist the body fully in attempting to distil the information immediately. The applicant is protected by having a broad paintbrush initially because civil servants will not be able to ask him or her to make further FOI requests for other information. That happens in some cases. A broad query initially puts the officials on notice that one means business and that they should provide the relevant information.

This is an important issue but it is not good enough that people must wait up to two years for a decision from the Information Commissioner on issues which are fundamental to the good management of the State. That must be tackled. Broadening the scope of the Act by increasing the number of bodies to which one can make FOI requests means that the Information Commissioner will need even more staff than the new recruits who will be appointed in the next few months.

I have a serious problem with people being charged for FOI applications. Civil servants are paid to do their job. They are professionals and I do not see why people should have to pay any thing for a normal FOI application. The officials are paid to supply the information, but I acknowledge there is a difficulty when somebody makes hundreds of requests. I am opposed to a charge, except in the most extreme cases. I do not agree with people selling information nor do I agree with somebody lodging thousands of requests, but the vast majority of those making requests are ordinary people. I am opposed to the £5 or £10 charge because it is a tax on information to which they are entitled and which should be given to them.

Mr. Finneran

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the freedom of information legislation. I agree that, by and large, the implementation of the freedom of information legislation has been a success. There is an acceptance in the public service and the Civil Service that members of the public are entitled to information. The Houses of the Oireachtas initiated the legislation in this House three years ago so that the public would be confident there was transparency throughout the public service and the Civil Service. The legislation has been implemented and has been a success.

As outlined earlier, up to 19,000 requests have already been received under this heading. They involve all Departments, health boards and local authorities. We have recently seen the involvement of the voluntary hospitals and certain bodies dealing with disability, which is important because it is a further extension of the scope of the legislation.

I have a personal interest in this matter from a political point of view in that I am a member of the sub-committee of the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service, which is reviewing the freedom of information legislation, and I also have an involvement as Whip of the all-party Oireachtas committee on the strategic management initiative. I am pleased that this House has an opportunity to debate the legislation and to get the views of the many Members who have an interest in it.

I welcome the decision of the Minister to extend the remit of the freedom of information legislation to include RTÉ and TG4. I had a particular difficulty with RTÉ in the past, as a member of the Joint Committee on Commercial State-sponsored Bodies, when certain presenters and hosts of some well-known shows consistently refused to furnish the committee with information on their high salaries. Those presenters and show hosts hid behind cleverly-worded contracts but they are employed in public service broadcasting and the public have a right to know how public money is spent. I ask the Minister of State, in extending the legislation to RTÉ, to ensure that this loophole is closed so that the public can have confidence in public sector broadcasting. It is only right that people employed in a public broadcasting company like RTÉ should supply the Houses of the Oireachtas with the necessary information to which they are entitled. I was disgusted in the past when certain well-known personalities refused to furnish the committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas with the information sought and hid cleverly behind certain contracts which created a loophole for them. I hope that will not happen when the freedom of information legislation is extended to include RTÉ.

Departments and health boards in particular have been very forthcoming as regards the freedom of information legislation. People thought that when the legislation was extended to include health boards it would create many problems. I was pleased to learn from the Minister of State, however, and from other information supplied, that the information obtained from requests to health boards is furnished on a confidential, voluntary and agreed basis. It is encouraging to know that we have people in the public service and the health boards who are forthcoming in that way. That augurs well for the freedom of information legislation and sets a standard for many other groups that will shortly come under the legislation.

Out of a total of 19,000 requests in two years, only 5 per cent have been referred to the commissioner. That figure speaks for itself. It is encouraging and indicates a trend in the public service that it is prepared to supply the information and that the people who request it are satisfied with the information they receive.

There are a number of areas we should debate inasmuch as we do not seem to be following the norm in terms of what happens in other jurisdictions. The amount of information sought in other countries under the various headings differs greatly from the experience here. Only 3 per cent of requests come from Oireachtas Members. I would have thought that figure would be greater because it is a means by which we can extract information from Departments. I am not sure it is used to the extent—

Mr. J. Doyle

Senator O'Dowd explained the difficulty he sometimes experiences in getting information.

Mr. Finneran

The sub-committee of the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service will be only too pleased to address any problems experienced by Members of the Oireachtas, or indeed anybody else, because it is the Government's intention that the legislation will be an information facility for politicians, journalists and everybody who is entitled to it. In his opening statement the Minister of State expressed the view that this was a worthwhile exercise because Members of this House could bring to bear their own experiences of the operation of the freedom of information legislation, and that can be taken on board in the review currently taking place.

I note that approximately 50 per cent of requests are made on a personal basis. That is probably due to an initial curiosity and perhaps some frustration on the part of individuals that they were not in a position to obtain information. The fact that the opportunity now exists is to be welcomed.

Journalists have an important part to play in this area and I am pleased to see that the legislation is used extensively by journalists. There should not be any constraint on journalists but sometimes information extracted under the freedom of information legislation can be sensationalised. I suppose there is a novelty factor to it but I hope that will find its own balance in time. My understanding of what happened in other jurisdictions is that some of the information extracted by journalists, particularly about public representatives, lost its appeal after a while. However, journalists should not be prohibited in extracting information because it is important that we have transparency in such a developed country. One way to do that is to ensure we have an independent, confident press which can perform its duty and report on all aspects of central Government, local government and public bodies. I am glad the Act is being extended to include non-commercial State bodies and others in the near future.

The ordinary citizen has a right to know about all of the issues that are discussed in public and financed by public moneys. One of the ways to ensure that is to have broad based freedom of information legislation such as we have at present. The extension of the Act to RTÉ, TG4 and commercial State bodies in the near future and to the universities is important. In all areas where public money is spent, whether it is in schools, hospitals or any area of State involvement, information should be made available. That is the intent down the road.

The CSUN is a group of information officers who are co-ordinating the area of freedom of information. Their work is important for the review of freedom of information legislation because we do not like to waste resources. Later on we could be labelled as a country that implemented legislation but did not review it, thus allowing resources to be wasted. Both Houses would not wish that to happen. On the one hand we are calling for transparency about public moneys spent by a body. On the other hand money spent on the freedom of information legislation should also be reviewed.

Earlier the Minister of State, Deputy Cullen, mentioned multiple requests. One individual's requests for information in a Department have cost £100,000. We should tease out the mechanism for making requests in the review. While I am not in a position to say that people abuse the system, it seems extraordinary that one individual could lodge 1,000 similar requests with one Department at a cost of £100,000. We should check whether that is an abuse of the legislation. I hope it is not, but if so then we should deal with it in the legislative review.

Mr. J. Doyle

A greater abuse is the selling of that information.

Mr. Finneran

I was coming to that issue. The Minister of State also referred to people who extract information and then sell it on to a commercial outfit. I strongly object to this practice.

Mr. Ryan

Hear, hear.

Mr. Finneran

It is a totally inappropriate use of the FOI legislation passed in this House. Anyone can extract valuable commercial information free of charge or for a very small fee and then sell it on for their own gain to a commercial outlet. That is not in keeping with the spirit of this legislation. If evidence of this practice is found then it should become part of the review. We should ensure that no individual can profit to the extent that a small number may be doing at present. Members would not wish individuals to profit in this way.

The legislation covers 170 public bodies, an extraordinary amount. It could not operate if various Departments had not trained people in advance. A total of 15,000 people were trained in this area. I know the local authority system and I am aware that each local authority identified an employee early on. I am sure other public bodies did the same. There was a general willingness in the public sector to take on board this legislation and implement it fully.

I have examined the freedom of information legislation in other jurisdictions. The Irish system is closely based on the Australian model and is similar to the Canadian model. The proposed freedom of information legislation for the UK, our nearest neighbour, is antediluvian when compared to the Irish legislation. Our legislation is to the fore in a European context. We are open in many ways. We have an open economy. It is important that we are open about our information as well.

The Irish diaspora is in the UK and all over the world. In the past few days I was pleased to hear that the voices of first and second generation Irish in London are being co-ordinated. We have heard about the Irish in America and we are all aware of the great political lobby they have developed, particularly in the past 20 years. There are Irish associations all over the UK but they have never been co-ordinated before. The Irish vote in London has never been co-ordinated, yet there could be up to 4 million people of Irish extraction living there. A co-ordination of that base would give a far greater voice to that group of people.

We have information that some of the Irish people, particularly males, who went to the UK in the 1950s are living in deplorable conditions in the suburbs and centre of London. Some of them have no health care or housing and have very little contact with their families back home. This Government should examine the problem. We have an opportunity to play a part in the rehabilitation of many of those people. Our social welfare system is very advanced. Perhaps we could bring them home so that they could benefit from a better lifestyle.

Mr. J. Doyle

We will hold the Senator to that.

Mr. Finneran

It is a laudable objective for any Government. I would like the Government to undertake to do something about the problem. I would not hesitate to promote and support such an initiative here.

Once again I express my appreciation to the House for having this debate. I am pleased to have been afforded an opportunity to make a contribution and I look forward with interest to the rest of the debate. I hope that the review of the legislation will lead to an FOI process that will be second to none in the world.

I am opposed, in practically all circumstances, to the individual having to pay costs because it would defeat the purpose of this legislation. It is important that the individual is entitled to access to personal information. In many other circumstances, such as the Houses of the Oireachtas and in many other situations, there should be no cost involved. A charge should be imposed only in extreme circumstances.

Mr. Quinn

I welcome the opportunity to have this debate. I have drawn attention on many occasions to the fact that, too often, we consider it the end of the matter once we have passed legislation and we put it behind us. We are often asked to pass new and untried legislation, the impact of which it is not possible to forecast precisely in advance. I have often called for the introduction of a mechanism which would allow us revisit an Act after it has been in operation for a certain length of time to see if it could be improved in the light of experience. My remarks on this subject have not generally been very successful and they seem to be swiftly forgotten in the rush to a get a Bill passed and onto the Statute Book.

However, on the basis of that principle, I welcome today's debate and that we are going to have another look at the Freedom of Information Act. I wish the practice of taking a second look at legislation was more general. It is very interesting that this is the only Act, of all the legislation passed in the seven years I have been a Member of this House, that is receiving this review.

There will be those think that the energy behind the Freedom of Information Act comes from those who were against the Act in the first place – I am sure Senator Ryan will have something to say on that. I hope that is not so and that we will lay any fears in that area to rest by resisting strongly any suggestions, even those which appear well-intentioned, to restrict the operation of the Act in any way. The Act is too important a development and too fragile and delicate to risk its future by messing around with its operation at this early stage. Let us listen carefully to any problems that have arisen, but let us be very slow to circumscribe the operation of the Act in any way.

My other general point is a little embarrassing for those of us who were Members of the House a couple of years ago, but it is one we should face up to. We legislators, particularly the Members of this House, should cherish the Freedom of Information Act as a major step forward towards open government and a better democracy. However, we must admit that, collectively, we have behaved quite disgracefully in regard to a particular matter, that is, the ill fated effort to keep from the public the details of the expenses drawn by Members of the Oireachtas.

I plead guilty to this mistake for the very worst of reasons. The first time the particular piece of paper passed over my desk I did not read it carefully. There seemed to be a strong body of opinion among Members that we should not reveal individually the information that was being sought. Without thinking much more about it, I went along with the general opinion. I only thought about it seriously after the matter was appealed to the Information Commissioner, who upheld the appeal. Our opinion was then canvassed again. We were asked if we wanted to continue to object or if we would give in. I began to think about it seriously at that point and I realised clearly the damage we were doing to ourselves by taking that attitude.

That is not to say the arguments against disclosure were not good, because I think they were. However, the truth is that in the real world, we, as legislators, could not afford to be seen to be holding back this information, however misleading or embarrassing its publication would be. As it turned out, many other Members felt the same way about it and the matter was settled without any further confrontation. I mention that matter now because I think we should be perfectly open about the fact that we made a serious error and misjudgment on that occasion.

Mr. J. Doyle

In fairness, we did not exclude that information in the Act, as they did in the House of Commons.

Mr. Quinn

We did not exclude it but we tried to find a way around it.

Mr. J. Doyle

Let us be fair to ourselves.

Mr. Quinn

We have already heard from Senators Finneran and Joe Doyle on this matter. There is little doubt we have nothing to learn from the British in this regard and they have a lot to learn from us.

I want to exorcise this demon so that it does not leave in either House any sentiment against the Freedom of Information Act itself. I hope Oireachtas Members will prove over time to be the staunchest supporters, advocates and defenders of the Freedom of Information Act.

Over the past ten years, the political process in Ireland has received many body blows. This has created an attitude of cynicism among the public which continues to grow with every passing month. As a result, it has become almost a cliché to talk about restoring public confidence in the public system because, unfortunately, most of what is done is nothing more than just talk. Over the past decade, there has been very little action to improve our democracy. We have talked about open and transparent government. However, every political decision in that regard is conservative and almost backward looking, rather than being forward looking and progressive.

The famous tribunals are a very good example. They were set up very reluctantly and in the most restrictive way possible. I do not blame any one political party for that. In the seven years I have been a Member, almost every party has been in Government and I cannot say that any one of them is more transparent and open than any other. Something happens as soon as they go into Government and their attitude appears to change. Perhaps they are got at by some sort of secret brotherhood – although I am sure that does not exist – the sort that believes knowledge is power and that it must be kept at all costs from those outside the corridors of power.

There have been just two shining lights in this sorry saga. The first is the office of the Ombudsman, which has gone from strength to strength and we should be proud of it. It grows more valuable every day. We have been fortunate in the calibre of the two people who have held that office since it was established.

The second shining light in that area of democracy has been the Freedom of Information Act. Over the past decade, it has been the only real action we have had to put alongside the rhetoric about openness and transparency. These Houses passed a vast amount of reforming legislation in that decade. When the stony eye of history casts its glance over all that legislation, the Freedom of Information Act will emerge as the jewel in our crown. We will look back on this and say we can be proud of it. The words we have heard today show there is quite an amount of pride in the Act.

Despite all the dire predictions that were made, the Act has worked well. It has revealed information that it has been proved to be useful to have in the public gaze. It has brought into the light of day many matters that had not been seen before and which people did not know about. The country is better served and is a better place as a result. The operation of the Act has, by and large, worked well, despite a little foot dragging here and there. The provisions of the Act have not been misused or abused. Any shortcomings have been trivial and something we must keep an eye on rather than being too concerned about. I am pleasantly surprised at the extent of progress that has been made in such a short time. The passing of this Act was a watershed in Irish public administration. Overnight we sought to change a culture of secrecy that had existed over many centuries of British rule and to move to a culture of openness. With few exceptions, we moved away from a regime where everything was secret and it is recognised as having been a great step forward.

I am not saying that the full transformation to such an open culture has been made yet, but what we changed overnight were the rules. The Act stated that from now on this is how it would be. We always envisaged that old habits would die hard and that for some people from the old school, particularly in the Civil Service, the idea of openness would be difficult to handle and would go against the grain. Given the examples of the Scandinavian countries, the United States and, as Senator Finneran reminded us, Australia and Canada we know that direction we sought to take was not only practical but highly desirable. It was the direction we knew we should take because there were examples of others who had done so before and it had proved successful for them.

It is not enough simply to pass a law, however, and it will be an ongoing task to make the Act work on a broader basis. Little by little we are extending the list of bodies to which the Act applies. I am delighted to hear from the Minister of State that the legislation will apply to a further range of bodies. We should be doing this to strengthen the Act and broaden its application.

I would like to see certain actions taken as regards the Act. The first relates to its timescale. A wise judge once said that justice delayed is justice denied and that is relevant to information. Sometimes it can take so long to obtain information that it is useless by the time it is revealed. Some information by its very nature is valuable only when it is fresh and if it takes too long to get it is not of the same value. We have not acknowledged that fact in the Act as it currently stands. While there are various provisions to guard against foot-dragging in general, the legislation is lacking in other respects. Some information should be accessible to the public much more quickly than the general run of information. In an ideal world, all information would be available instantly. Perhaps we are getting closer to that ideal with the Internet and other electronic means of communications, but we are a long way from it just yet.

In addition to speeding up the overall process, we should also provide for a fast-track approach that would bring information on time-sensitive issues into the public domain much faster than the general run of information. We should take this into account, although I am not quite sure how it could be done.

We also need to address the danger that some people will try to get around the Act by refusing to commit things to paper. We have heard of such instances occurring. I am no great fan of paper myself and we had a former Taoiseach who wanted everything on one page. However, I was shocked to learn from the Committee of Public Accounts that no records whatever were kept of strategically important meetings in the Department of Finance at the very time when decisions were being made on matters of the highest national importance. That is the type of example I am talking about – somebody who decides not to put anything on paper as a way of avoiding disclosure.

The legislation should provide for the fact that certain things must be recorded and these records must be kept. If one runs a business, however small, one is required by law to keep certain information and records which must be available for inspection by, for example, the Revenue Commissioners or others. Not even the smallest business has the right to dispense with keeping those records, they must do it. We should impose the same requirements on public service decision-making.

We should try to encourage and perhaps even reward a more proactive approach to the question of releasing information. In other words, not doing so reluctantly but proactively as with the work of the Ombudsman. In that case, the ideal would be that eventually there would be nothing to complain about at all and, ideally, the Ombudsman would not be needed any more if that were so. With regard to information we should aim at a situation where no one has to seek information because it is released automatically. That may appear to be too much but it is possible to do it with modern communications. One would not have to seek the information any longer, it would be there automatically at the touch of a button.

A positive aspect of the unfortunate business over the Oireachtas Members' expenses was that, as a consequence, it was decided to release that information on a regular basis without having to wait for journalists to dig it out. I think that is good and it is what we should aim to do in general rather than in specific cases only. I am not sure legislation has a role in this matter at all. It may be that there are other means of encouraging Government agencies to be proactive in this way. For instance, I can see the merit of having an annual reward for the Department or other body that has taken the most innovative and imaginative way of putting information into the public domain.

When I was involved in An Post, we tried to have our annual report win the Leinster Society of Chartered Accounts' prize for the most open and best presented report. It was a great competition and, although we never actually won it, we tended to come near the top. There was competition between the various bodies to see who could have the best annual report with the most readable information. Such an award might be the way to go about recognising the provision of information in the public service. The creation of such an award could be driven by the Government itself or by an outside sponsor such as the accountants' society. I hope the Government will take action of this kind because it would be an excellent way to show that the Administration's heart lies where its rhetoric claims it to be. It would demonstrate that it was doing what it claims to, in addition to achieving something more.

As we consider the early workings of this fine legislation, there is much to be proud of. Much can and should be done to extend the Act. We have heard about some of that today and it is happening. We need to strengthen the legislation's defences against that diminishing band who would seek to defy, decry or weaken the Act in some form. All the energy we have to bring about change should be focused positively rather than negatively.

Although I did not hear any suggestions to this effect today, this is not a time to restrict the workings of the Act. Anything that may be necessary in that regard could be done later when we have had some time to consider it retrospectively. I welcome this opportunity to revisit the Act after a comparatively short period. I also welcome the chance to consider whether or not there are aspects that we could handle better. I welcome the Minister's decision to extend the scope of the Act. The message should go out to everybody that the Freedom of Information Act is good legislation, the like of which we want more, not less.

Mr. Farrell

I agree with much of what Senator Quinn has said. Will the Minister tell the House what the Freedom of Information is costing the taxpayer?

Mr. Ryan

A veritable fortune.

Mr. Farrell

Who is making the most money out of it? Many people from the newspaper business seek information under the Act and then sell it as a product. The Freedom of Information Act was never intended to provide a commodity that one could obtain freely, yet sell for a very good price. If someone is selling a product gained by the Freedom of Information Act, they should pay the full cost. Costs of £100,000 have been incurred in one Department in dealing with requests from an individual who has also sent requests to several other Departments. Would the Minister tell the House who that person is? Have some people priority because they may be journalists and do not have to reveal their names? If Seán Citizen writes in, does he have to reveal his name?

I wonder about all this freedom and transparency, terms which are part of modern jargon. Is it in the interests of the general public or is it of public interest? It is just something of public interest, another story. Irish people love to know what their neighbour is receiving and criticise him for it. If at all possible, they make the case, "Only for who he was, he wouldn't get it." The Freedom of Information Act is being abused in this manner. It will also be a pathfinder for criminals to people who are earning a great deal of money or in big business. If someone is dealing with a person in business, information given should be about the business, not their families, their homes or their private property.

It is scandalous that if somebody is charged with drunk driving there is no mention of it, unless it is a son of a Deputy or a Senator. The headlines read, "Senator's Son", or "TD's Son", throughout the media. There seems to be a philosophy in the media to attack politicians particularly and this information is being used in a manner which does not indicate higher motives. I would like to know if they would print this information free of charge in a free supplement which one could take without buying the newspaper. I guarantee that will not happen.

The people who are buying information to resell it should pay the full cost of producing it, especially at a time when there is a shortage of staff and one is told on phoning a Department that they cannot deal with a query because they are short of staff. They have to handle this material to facilitate a few.

I have no problem with people who genuinely request some information about themselves. It was wrong that people did not know what was on file or computer about them. I welcome the Freedom of Information Act to give individuals the right to know everything they want about themselves, but I question why anyone would want information about their neighbour. Where does privacy come into this? How long will it be before we have a system whereby Senator Quinn will be sending a request for information as to what a person bought in his store and how much shopping they do? This is the road we are heading down if we continue. There has to be some reality brought into this.

The legal profession use it to obtain information to bolster their cases. If a legal man takes on a case, his client should be able to give him as much information as he wants. The Freedom of Information Act was never intended to be a handy system of collecting information for lawyers. There are enough barrister fattening exercises currently without the Freedom of Information Act contributing to the kitty. If I write in under the Freedom of Information Act and ask the name of a person who is making requests costing £100,000 in one Department alone, perhaps £500,000, £600,000 or £700,000 if all the Departments were added up, am I entitled to the name and address of that person? I would like to know as I will be challenging it. I will write in for it if the Minister cannot tell me in his contribution at the end of this debate. It is very important that we are told the names of the people who are costing so much public service money and time.

We hear so much about all the houses we could build. Here is the money. What does the general public gain from it? A contribution of £100,000 to Senator Ryan's organisation which does good work for poor people, the Simon Community, would help an organisation like that considerably instead of its being wasted. My guess is that it is possibly some media man who is getting product and making a great deal of money out of it. I resent the fact that anyone can get product by such means. Imagine the outcry if a public representative or anyone else was getting something for nothing and selling it for a large amount of money. Some people seem to be able to make money under the guise of the public interest. There should be a system whereby the Government should issue this information in a public way because I resent the money being made from it. That is my point. I am not so much against the provision of the information. If someone wants information they are entitled to it, but it should not be given out for sale as a product and to make money.

This is costing county councils, health boards and all the Departments a great deal of money. What service is given to the general public? Can any taxpayer say it is worth it and that they received information out of it? Who can say that? It is waste of money. If RTÉ is brought into the net, for instance, most of the big earners in RTÉ have private contracts. We are arriving at the stage where anybody with a private contract with public or private companies will be in this net. The Minister said it is not intended to cover the journalistic, editorial and programme functions of RTÉ and that Senators will understand the sensitivities that surround journalists' notes, videotapes of certain events and so forth. We will not receive any information on that, it is protected. Why should that be protected? Why should my information be public? That is not freedom of the press, only freedom of the press to say what they think and freedom to hold what they do not wish to give out. We will not hear anything if they are only going to get their minimum wage. We will not hear about all the junkets they go on. We will not be told where they are flying in the world. We will not be told any of that information. They will be told about every senior civil servant, every Minister, every member of their staff and every Member of Dáil Éireann, what they received and on what junkets they went, but we are not told about the junkets enjoyed by those in the media. The greatest junketeers in the world today are in the media, but we will not be told what they are receiving.

It is about time if there is to be freedom of information that this freedom covers everything, is not selective, is open to everyone and that I can write in and ask a newspaper what a particular journalist is earning, what junkets he went on and what it cost the newspaper. Then we will have freedom of information. When I can write in and ask what a particular county manager or secretary does, then we will have freedom of information. When I can find out what everyone is spending I will be very happy with freedom of information, but I am not happy with restricted freedom of information, which is what we have. There is freedom of information for those who want to make money out of it.

Senator Manning and I have campaigned for this debate for a long time. I want full freedom of information. I want to be able to write to any public organisation, such as RTÉ, and find out what a certain trip cost and what its benefits were. I want to know what hotels those people stayed in and what big nights out they had. The only people who seem to be targeted by this are politicians on all sides. We have nothing to hide. I am not worried about my expenses. I only get what I earn and I have no problem with that, but I have a problem when I cannot find out exactly how much money is being earned by those writing about my expenses. I have no way of highlighting this because even if I raise it here they will only print what they want. They will print nothing they do not like.

What percentage of freedom of information inquiries are from the press and what percentage come from the public? What is this costing taxpayers? Those are pertinent questions. When the freedom of information provisions are broadened will they apply to all public bodies and will I be able to get the same information about someone writing about me as he or she can get about me? I will never agree with freedom of information that is carefully planned so as to target public servants or politicians. We hear nothing about those who are putting us in the limelight.

I am disappointed RTÉ will have certain privileges, as that organisation has too many privileges. I have no privileges and it should have none either. It should be subject to the same law as I am. The day I have access to the same information about those people as they are entitled to about me, we will have freedom of information in Ireland of which we can be proud. However, I have never agreed with a freedom of information Bill that only gives selective information to selected people and which costs the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds, though the media can sell it on as a product for profit.

These are unpopular things to say. There is too much pandering and cuddling up to the media because people are afraid of bad publicity. If one is straight, above board and on the right road, nobody can be given bad publicity. A recent television programme showed the phenomenon of kiss and tell, where ladies go out, all dressed up, and try to get in with someone with a big name. These ladies try to get the person drunk and have a night out with him, then they go to the media and sell the story for up to £10,000. This is the kind of society we are building. People are being cajoled and entrapped because of the money-making media game.

The newspapers do not care about what the public knows. They want something with bite for their columns which will make them thousands of pounds. One tabloid gave a woman £50,000 for her story. How much is it making if it can afford that kind of money? One journalist recently said it pays them to do so, even if they have to settle a case for £50,000 or £100,000, as they make so much money selling extra newspapers when the case goes to court. The higher motives of education or information are not behind such stories. These stories ensure that newspapers are sold. They get a cheap product and sell it on at a colossal price.

Mr. Ryan

I have more sympathy with Senator Farrell than might be imagined, though I do not agree with him completely. The issue of freedom of the press is compounded by the commercialisation of the press generally, but that has always been the case. I read Fintan O'Toole's biography of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and if we think politics today is dirty, unpleasant or has the taint of corruption, the politics of the House of Commons of the late 1700s and early 1800s was so brutal, corrupt and ruthless as to make the hair of any Senator or Deputy stand on end. Lords of the press were as ruthless and unpleasant then as they are today.

However, PLCs have an obligation and we are timid in our assertion of shareholders' rights in this regard. I agree totally with Senator Farrell that the preoccupation with the income and expenses of Oireachtas Members contrasts with the general indifference to the extraordinary levels of payment that directors of major PLCs award themselves. One of our major banks, in the year of its disgrace, decided its directors were still worthy of a 10% increase when, in a properly ordered world most of them would have resigned for having let down the organisation they worked for, in particular as some of them were accused of, effectively, deliberately misleading and telling untruths to a sub-committee of the Dáil.

I have a personal involvement here, though it does not require a declaration of interest, as I introduced the first Freedom of Information Bill in the Oireachtas. It seems like another era, though it was only 1988 or 1989. However, my reasons then were as good as they are now – they related to the extraordinary obsession with secrecy which pervaded many areas of public policy. That is only 12 years ago, but I remember the Department of Social Welfare's reluctance to let people know why, in any detail, they had been refused benefits. They received a vague answer and that was it. There was no chance to challenge the decision.

I remember the secrecy surrounding environmental issues. Cork County Council had emissions data relating to every company in the lower Cork Harbour area. It turned out subsequently that most of them behaved very well, but the council refused to disclose information, which resulted in people being able to make the most outrageous accusations. In the recent past, when Dublin County Council was still a single unit it was asked about emissions from a company. I will not name the company as the reporters will ask me to spell its name and I cannot, but it is a pharmaceutical company with Japanese owners in north County Dublin and its name is well known. The company has an impeccable environmental record and publishes monitoring data on its emissions on a daily basis. That information is available at the gate to anybody who wishes to see it, yet when somebody approached the county council seeking the information, the person was told, much to the embarrassment of the company, that it could not be provided as it was commercially sensitive.

I am aware of a case in which the Health and Safety Authority declined to confirm whether it had carried out an inspection of the building in which a person worked because it was not the practice to make such information available. I am glad to note that some time next year, the authority will be covered by the provisions of the Act.

The Freedom of Information Act is a very fine Act, one of many which the party of which I am now a member left behind after the 1992-97 period. I was not a member of the party at that time and am not seeking to claim any credit in this regard. The Act is one of the best in the world and provides a reasonable level of protection. Incidentally, Senator Farrell's fears are unfounded. Any information relating to his personal records in his private capacity, as distinct from his role as a Senator, is resolutely defended by the Act. It would be very difficult to obtain personal information about a private citizen via the Freedom of Information Act. In many ways, people are probably better protected now in that the Act specifically includes a right of privacy which did not exist in the same explicit terms in previous legislation. Having said that, I concur with the Swedish view that the amount of tax paid by individual citizens should be a matter of public record but we have not yet come that far. Personal privacy is scrupulously protected under this Act.

Ireland has always been a remarkably accessible democracy. That fact is epitomised by the current Taoiseach and I do not mean that in any negative or pejorative way. One could not imagine the Prime Minister of any other country being as accessible. Some people are bothered by the fact that our politicians are remarkably accessible, but I am not.

We live in a peculiar society. If people are asked about politicians on a collective basis, they express extraordinarily negative sentiments but say quite the opposite about politicians with whom they are personally acquainted. This has been brought home to me in the most painful and tragic manner in recent years from within my own party. The Labour Party has buried three TDs from three different backgrounds, one was strongly rural, one was a radical atheist, agnostic from a very Catholic city and one, Pat Upton, represented a different brand of the left and its language. In each case, the level of genuine public affection for the individual concerned was overwhelming. People may have changed their minds about whether to vote for these people from time to time, but there was no denying the depth of public affection for them. That would apply to the majority of Oireachtas Members. I also attended Jack Lynch's funeral. We should not underestimate ourselves.

While our democracy is very accessible, I am not sure about our bureaucracy. I have always held the slightly sceptical view about social workers in the area of housing allocation that their function is to protect housing officers from having to deal directly with people who are looking for houses. It is strange that those who allocate houses rarely have to confront the people about whom they make decisions. That unpleasant job is left to the social workers.

I read the CSUN report and listened to the Minister's speech. It is difficult to argue with many of the suggestions made. I was happy with the tone of the Minister's remarks about abuse but we should consider introducing a degree of informality at some stage in the process to allow requests to be clarified. While some requests may appear to be trawling, they could well be the product of inexperience or inadequate clarity. A degree of informality somewhere along the line could spectacularly reduce the burden of work. I agree that we should devise a process to deter irresponsible use of the Act. However, any decision about irresponsible use should not be made within the Department from which the information is sought. That should be a role for the information commissioner, not for individual Departments. I am as concerned as anyone else about malicious efforts to clog up certain Departments.

An issue contained in the CSUN report which I did not find referred to in the Minister's speech or speaking notes is the subsequent status of information released under the Act. It seems that when information is released once under a freedom of information request, it should be easily accessible and recognisable in the public domain. Information which is, of its nature, public is not covered by the Act. It is not necessary to undergo the freedom of information procedure to obtain information which is in the public domain. The CSUN report states that it is not clear what the status of information which is released once will be subsequently and that it is not clear whether the protection of people from defamation actions would be covered if the information was released other than through the freedom of information procedure.

Every Department and public body should compile an index of information which it has released under the Freedom of Information Act. Those Departments and bodies should identify the nature of the information and where or how it can be accessed. A significant proportion of the information could be scanned onto a departmental website where people could access it very easily. Any information which has been released once should subsequently be available automatically without people having to make freedom of information requests. There are two reasons for that, the first being to reduce the burden of work within Departments and the second being that once information becomes easily accessible to the public, the capacity of any individual to exploit it commercially is immediately undermined without any ponderous prohibitions. If people know that information released under the Act is easily accessible via a website, a simple query or an index, the belief that it is necessary to pay somebody can be eradicated.

There is a case to be made for publishing the names of people who seek information under the Act. I see no reason I should think that freedom of information is a wonderful idea but that my name should be kept secret if I seek information. I see no reason for that other than in cases in which people seek personal information which is a separate issue. In general, I see no reason to keep the names of people who seek information secret.

I want to refer briefly to the issue of our expenses as it is one which bothers people. I have always believed that these should be automatically disclosed in Iris Oifigiúil on a monthly basis. No document is more difficult to read than Iris Oifigiúil and if journalists want to find out about our expenses, they should buy that publication. The exercise indulged in in our case was a profoundly sloppy piece of journalism. The total expenses was one of the shock, horror stories, although that figure is published on an annual basis in the Book of Estimates. The notion that this was a shock disclosure made under the Freedom of Information Act reflected far worse on the journalists than on us. It would only take about ten minutes' work on a calculator to calculate exactly what any Senator could claim in expenses. My address is known, as is the number of days the Oireachtas meets, and this makes it possible to achieve a ballpark figure.

It might have been interesting to go through all Members and identify one or two, if they exist, where it was difficult to reconcile the expenses paid with the location of their home and the distance they have to travel. That would be a genuine public service, but to produce a hit list from the biggest to the smallest is lazy and sloppy and what I have often described as voyeuristic journalism. I am not attacking Ministers but they operate under a different regime and it is wrong to cite them as claiming the least expenses. I do not begrudge them their halos, but it is wrong, as are the journalists who wrote it. If people wanted to provide a public service, they could look at the voting and other records of Members of this House and compare them with the expenses they claim. That would be a legitimate exercise in public accountability, unlike simply publishing a list.

For example, the Government Chief Whip in this House comes at the top of the list. That should not be allowed without affirmation of the facts that he lives as far away from Dublin as one can live and that he is here, of necessity, five days a week because he does his job conscientiously. However, those who wrote the list never investigated any of that. The issue of our expenses is dead and buried and I do not think anyone will ever notice it again. It is silly that some expenses are covered and not others. I do not understand why travel under the auspices of the Interparliamentary Union should be regarded as confidential but travel under the auspices of an Oireachtas committee should not. All this material should be in the public domain and I suggest to the Minister that we think about this. I am sure he is sensible and will not endeavour to do anything about Members' expenses because of the ire it might raise.

I am concerned about the long delay in dealing with appeals to the information commissioner's office. He should have the resources to deal with appeals in the same timeframe as Departments are required to deal with them. I know it can be disruptive but Departments can usually obtain enough resources to meet these deadlines. The information commissioner is on a fixed budget. If 5% of refusals are appealed, which is, at a generous estimate, roughly 1,200, it should be possible to give the information commissioner sufficient resources to deal with them in a two to four week period.

An idea has floated across not from this Government but from that side of the political process that people are inhibited in writing their views because they might be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act. I have little sympathy with that view. If an opinion is worth saying, it is worth writing down. If people do not have the conviction that the advice they are giving is of sufficient worth to write down, no Minister should pay much heed to it. It is important that the Government insists that record keeping in Departments does not deteriorate because of fear of disclosure. I happily accept that public servants must be protected from malicious suits of defamation and they should be able to express their opinions freely. However, there is nothing wrong in that regard because increasingly public servants must come before Oireachtas committees and express their opinions freely. They are no longer able to hide behind ministerial responsibility.

In a review like this retrospection should be examined, although there are administrative and practical problems. For example, the public would be fascinated by the records in the Depart ment of the Taoiseach between 1987 and 1990. The records of the Department of Communications when the former Minister, Ray Burke, was Minister would also be interesting. This information will be available in 30 years anyway and it is a pity we do not examine the question of retrospection.

Another issue is the extension of this to meetings as well as records. The American Government, in its Sunshine Act, requires any body which receives most of its money from the public to meet in public, to a similar degree to which disclosure is required under the Freedom of Information Act, with similar exemptions. This morning there was a private briefing of the Dáil select committee dealing with the Planning and Development Bill by Eircell, which is a private company. I have profound reservations about a private company being able to give a private briefing to an Oireachtas committee. It is wrong in concept and the committee was wrong to agree to it. Oireachtas committees dealing with important legislation should not allow individuals, groups or companies to brief them in private. It is the wrong way to do things and is in direct contradiction to the spirit of this legislation. If companies or individuals have issues about legislation they want changed, it is their democratic right to pursue them, but it is not their democratic right to have the fact that they are pursuing them concealed from the public. That is wrong.

I am interested, for personal reasons, in the proposals to extend the Freedom of Information Act to universities and what the Minister described as "other colleges". I hope that includes institutes of technology. This is correct, necessary and long overdue, not because anything is wrong, but because it gives an increased sense of accountability.

Senator Farrell raised an issue which is worth pursuing. Whether I like it, we are becoming a shareholding democracy. We have one of the company law regimes which is least protective of small shareholders in terms of the questions they can ask and how they can ask them. It is difficult at an AGM of an Irish PLC to ask about safety, environmental standards or directors' remuneration. This area must be looked at to give an equivalence of access to information to shareholders to that which is given to shareholders of the State through the public sector. I know the arguments about enterprise etc., but limited liability, particularly for PLCs, is an enormous privilege and it should not enable people to protect themselves from proper accountability to those whose interests they are supposed to be guarding.

I am still unhappy with our view of Cabinet confidentiality. I know we changed the Constitution but I still do not like it. I put it on the record at every opportunity that I am taken aback at the belief of the Supreme Court that members of Government would be inhibited in expressing their opinions if they thought the public would discover what they were. This is extraordinary. It is a complete misunderstanding of the dynamics of democracy and the operation of politics. None of us in politics has any problems expressing opinions. If anything, we express too many too often and at too great a length. The idea that Ministers would be continuously inhibited by the fact that under certain circumstances their opinions might be recorded and disclosed is incomprehensible.

I am glad I do not see a conspiracy to do anything other than fine tune the Act. I would be reluctant to penalise people for making multiple applications. The information commissioner, not the Department, should have the right to judge if an individual is acting maliciously and restrict that person's right to use the Act. Much of the burden would be dealt with if, once information was disclosed and was permanently in the public domain, it was indexed and easily accessible.

Mr. Mooney

I welcome the Minister to the House once again. I am particularly pleased that he has responsibility for this area because, as a former Member of this House as well as a current Member of the other House, he has a deep understanding of the background and context in which the Freedom of Information Act was debated in this House in 1996 and subsequently.

I want to commence where Senator Ryan left off because the main thrust of my contribution is the question of Cabinet confidentiality. However, I wish to approach it from a different perspective. While the culture of secrecy that has surrounded Cabinet decisions since the foundation of the State may be frustrating for those of us who are living through it, how much more frustrating must it be for present day scholars looking at the past and future scholars looking at the present? It is salutary to remember that, to the best of my knowledge, only two former Cabinet Ministers have committed their experiences in Government to paper. One was former Minister for Education, Ms Gemma Hussey, and the other was former Taoiseach, Dr. Garret FitzGerald. There may have been others, but they are the two who spring to mind. Both published their tomes prior to the Supreme Court judgment on Cabinet confidentiality. Therefore, one can only speculate as to how much shorter their books would have been had they been written subsequent to the judgment.

Perhaps in overseeing the workings of the Act, the Minister might look at the question of Cabinet confidentiality, although I accept it is not directly within his domain, in the context of Cabinet papers and their release under the 30 year rule. My reason for suggesting this is people's interest in looking back at history, even recent history that many of us remember – Senator Ryan referred to the 1987-90 period. I am interested in the question of Ireland's neutrality during the Second World War and Ireland's relationship with Britain. Ireland has suffered from a bad press mainly propagated by the British who believed we were kow-towing to the Nazis. There has been much misinterpretation of history. Despite the best efforts of Irish scholars and authors to redress the balance, in the absence of information about what happened around the Cabinet table during that crucial period we are left without a proper interpretation of history.

The greatest casualty of the Supreme Court decision is that future historians and future generations will have nothing to go on other than that a decision was arrived at in Cabinet. There will be no elaboration on how a discussion developed, about who was for or against or about how consensus was eventually arrived at under the collective Cabinet responsibility concept. I do not want to labour the point, but we should not let that matter lie. I support Deputy Ryan's overall approach to the Supreme Court judgment. I too was absolutely astonished that the Supreme Court should make this judgment and so narrowly define what is essentially an important tool of democracy, namely, how decisions are arrived at in Government.

Let me turn to the background to this Act, which was welcome, and the context in which it was developed. There was some doubt about it at the time. It was somewhat unfortunate that the promoters of the Act became somewhat blurred and the former Minister of State, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, who steered it through may have been a political casualty as a result of her reforming zeal in this House. However, I acknowledge that it was she who as Minister steered it through and that there was a very interesting and stimulating debate in the House at that time.

There were 19,000 requests in the first two years, which indicates that there has been widespread public acceptance of the concept of freedom of information. It is also rather interesting that journalists form one of the highest proportions of those using the Act. It is interesting to explore the use to which journalists have put it. Not only has Senator Ryan but other speakers have focused on the use to which newspapers have put it. The statistics are somewhat revealing in that three major newspapers made the bulk of requests. They made repeated requests that make up the bulk of the 600 requests for information. I suggest, in the absence of analysis, that with the exception of a major story which The Irish Times did on the Department of Finance memoranda which it got horribly wrong, most of the information has centred around just one subject, namely, the question of expenses of Members of the Oireachtas. I could name the three papers from my own anecdotal recollection –The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, and the Sunday Tribune.It is interesting to note that a recent statistical survey carried out as part of the ongoing analysis of newspaper readership and circulation here showed that all the Irish newspapers showed significant increases, which is a welcome development. Despite the Internet, high technology, television and all the other distractions, Irish people still believe the printed word is an important tool in accessing information in our society. It was interesting to note, when one looked through the detail of the analysis of readership of all the newspapers, that there was one newspaper that showed a decline in readership. That newspaper was the Sunday Tribune, which has consistently and regularly highlighted what it presumes to be nefarious activities by elected Members of both Houses of the Oireachtas, which by implication and by innuendo has suggested, in publishing lists of expenses, that we are part of a questionable Administration. Perhaps the Sunday Tribune might look to its editorial policy.

I cannot help but remember a particular occasion when it decided to do a two-page feature on this House and on the speaking record of Members. It published a large six by four photograph of the then Chief Whip on the Government side, who is now the Cathaoirleach, and wrote a most scurrilous suggestion, conveying by innuendo that the Chief Whip, who because of his role is restricted in making the normal and regular contributions that Members of this House on all sides make, was somehow inactive as a Senator. His electorate ignored that scurrilous allegation and re-elected him at the subsequent election. That was a typical example of taking information and abusing it. I have waited four years for an opportunity to say that and I am glad I got the opportunity to say it now because the victim of that allegation was not in a position to defend himself.

In the context of the lists of expenses published in the newspapers and the insistence by the Sunday Tribune in particular, and by other newspapers to a lesser extent, that there was opposition within these Houses to the availability of that information, I refute that. Deputies and Senators of all parties were fully aware of the import and implications of the Freedom of Information Act. It was signalled well in advance that information relating to a Member's expenses came within its ambit and would be accessed and printed by newspapers. I say, without fear of contradiction, that in my presence in my party not one Member of either House publicly objected to that information being made available to anybody, including newspapers. Perhaps we could put that aspect of the debate to bed.

We recognise our responsibilities as publicly elected representatives. We were fully aware that it was public money that was being used and that the public had a right to know how it was being spent. I support Senator Ryan's view that there should be no exclusions. Why should there be a hierarchy in which certain moneys which are spent in a certain way are not part of the Freedom of Information Act and other public moneys are? It is not something which exercises the minds of Members of this House to any great extent. Let the newspapers continue to publish such stories for as long as they want to do so. I personally could not care less what information they publish about the public money which I earn as a Member of this House.

In the context of the FOI, I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Cullen, about a matter which comes within his mandate regarding the resources of this House and which I previously mentioned to him on an informal basis, that is, the future development of the library resources of this House. I have had the opportunity of visiting other parliaments, particularly the House of Commons where there is a highly sophisticated development of their library services to the point where members of that house, and particularly backbenchers, rely on it to an extraordinary degree and where the powers of the library are such that they can access information directly from Ministers in confidence. In other words, if a member of that house wishes to extract particular information from a specific ministry, the library has the right to make that inquiry and the Minister's office has no right to inquire about the origins of the inquiry. That is an important protection of sources in the context of the functioning of a viable democracy and of the relationship between government and opposition.

I ask the Minister of State to give serious consideration, in the context of his development of the resources and facilities of this House, to developing the library service of this House. As everybody who has had any access to its services knows, the library's staff are an excellent and committed group of people who are readily available and who make an enormous amount of information available to Members. They operate in severely cramped conditions in an environment which does not lend itself to orderly expansion of the existing resources of the House. It seems to me that if the library resources were expanded and developed along the lines of those I experienced in the parliament in Britain, it would contribute to a wider flow of knowledge to Members of the House.

The single biggest difficulty encountered by all Members of both Houses, and particularly backbenchers, is that because of the ad hoc development of support services for Members we do not enjoy the same level of research facilities as other parliaments, as anybody who has travelled to other parliaments will testify. I know it is something which resources have not allowed in the past. Under the new and more prosperous environment I hope that these and many other facilities for Members will develop as they have been doing. I compliment the Minister on his initiative in that regard.

A more sophisticated development of the library resources which would give the librarians more autonomy, greater technological support and better conditions. It would be an important tool of the democratic activity which goes on in this House which would enable Members to question the Government more closely and make Members more aware of the issues on a wide variety of subjects on which they might wish to make a contribution in either House. I hope that the Minister of State, Deputy Cullen, might reflect on the status of the library services in this House as they relate to Members' interests and perhaps bring forward proposals or suggestions at some future time. This House might facilitate a debate on the matter.

I would agree with all those who have welcomed the extension of the Act. I hope that this ongoing extension will continue to the point where all aspects of public life will be seen to be, in what has now become a cliché but what is a relevant phrase nonetheless, open, transparent and accountable. For too long there has been a culture of secrecy, not only within the political system and establishment but also, as we have sadly seen, within the other pillars of the State. This secrecy, which is coming asunder, has caused all of us to examine ourselves as a people.

We have always prided ourselves on adhering to democratic principles. My wish that the Freedom of Information Act, in its present form and by its future expansion, will brush aside all the cobwebs in Irish life to the point where we, as Members of the Houses, will be able to get on with the business of legislating, while the newspapers and those who are representing the public interest outside of these Houses will also have full access to all of the information which is available. Then the media stories of the future will not focus on how much money Members are making but on the worth of what they are doing and whether the questions about what they are doing are effective to improve the quality of life for all citizens. I compliment the Minister of State, Deputy Cullen, on overseeing developments in this area and I hope he might take on board some of the comments we in this House have made.

Minister of State at the Department of Finance (Mr. Cullen)

I concur with Senator Mooney's views on the wider matter of the library and its facilities. The point was well made. I am already looking at the wider context of the matters he raised. In the context of the new developments, we are fortunate that the National Library is within the same precincts. We have been having discussions with the National Library in terms of making available the fullness of the available library resource in the totality of these precincts. It should be maximised to the benefit of everybody, including the Members of both Houses.

Any time I get the opportunity I refer to the restoration of the National Library, and the reading room in particular, which is one of the most fantastic restorations done. Anybody who has not seen it should certainly do so. It is unique in the world, not just in this country. The restorers were involved in so many aspects of the work and they did a wonderful job.

As I stated earlier, we are two years into the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, 1997, and we are still in a transitional phase of its operation. Many bodies have yet to fall within the remit of the FOI Act. For those which are already within its remit, the new system has yet to settle down entirely. We are still regularly seeing new legal issues raised. Moreover, we would expect that over time the FOI Act and other legislative initiatives will help to shape a more open culture within the public service. It is important to put the FOI Act in the widest possible context of the major reform which is going on in the public service.

I tried to indicate, when I was speaking earlier, that the FOI Act is a "driver" of many other things rather than just fulfilling its own narrow use. That is being seen to be true on a daily basis. I particularly commend the semi-State bodies of the Department which have grasped the nettle and are undergoing a major culture change, of which the FOI Act is very much a part. Perhaps one might have thought that the health boards would have had a particular difficulty with it, given all the things which would have happened over the years in that arena. They may perhaps have been viewed unfairly by some of us as having been slow to grapple with it and not liking it or maybe not wanting to be involved in it, but they are probably among the most successful facilitators of the FOI Act. They should be commended for the way they grasped it and were open, direct and responsive. It is important that we put the Act in the widest context as one of the drivers of much change in the cultural process which is taking place.

Public servants as well as members of the public must continue to have faith in the Act and in the manner in which it is implemented within public bodies. In other words, not only must there be political ownership of it but there must be ownership within the public service also, and I believe there is. I must, therefore, give careful consideration to the views expressed in the CSUN report, many of which I referred to earlier. I wanted to make Senators aware of what the CSUN was saying but it did not mean that I would run with everything it stated. One must listen to it as it is the group involved in the day to day operation of the Act.

I am also anxious to take into account the views of Members. That is why I went to the committees to enunciated certain proposals and ideas and to listen to what was being said. It is the best way we can move forward in terms of the Act. Some very interesting points were made about moving forward and I will certainly take them into account.

Senator O'Dowd and others mentioned the variability in the quality of responses to requests from various bodies. I am anxious to see a level playing pitch. Much of the difference stems from the fact that some Departments have very good record keeping and management systems while others in the past have not, and this determines the time taken to respond to a request. I know all Departments and public bodies are trying to get new systems up and running and I think this will level the playing field. I also noted Senator O'Dowd's and others views on charges which generally concur with my own approach.

Contracts made by RTÉ will be covered by the Freedom of Information Act.

All legislation, particularly new legislation, must be reviewed. In my years in both Houses I have never considered a Bill or Act to be a Holy Grail or a definitive provision which cannot be altered. Therefore, there is nothing sinister in looking at the legislation and I hope everybody will agree I am doing so in an open and public way by raising in public fora the different issues so as to ensure the legislation is a model of best practice and well benchmarked against what is happening in other jurisdictions.

I appreciate what Senators, including Senator Ryan, said about the working of the Act being viewed very positively worldwide. I had a most interesting experience in the UK in advance of its introducing a Freedom of Information Act when I sat with the joint committee of the House of Lords and House of Commons. They may not have been pleased with some of the things I said to them, but it was reasonable to suggest that their legislation was very much about freedom from information. The historical secrecy which pervades public life there was again being enshrined, and I contrasted this to what we did. Our Act made many people sit up. Perhaps they were horrified, but it demonstrated our commitment.

Over the coming year it is necessary to establish the costs involved. We have to weigh this against the tremendous public interest in the Act. The State has to bear a very substantial cost as it is to the benefit of the public. I am not in favour of charges for requests by individuals for personal information. There are specific areas which we can examine where reasonable charges could be made.

The commercial use of the Freedom of Information Act was also raised. There is one company operating as a commercial entity, although I do not know with what level of success as I have been trying to ensure information is made public very quickly. Anybody is entitled to seek the information and apart from one or two reasons I do not see why a person would want to pay somebody else to get it.

Senator Ryan raised the issue of who requesters are and their names remaining secret. However, while personal requesters should certainly remain secret, information regarding companies and individuals who request information is available and I have put it on the record. I agree that such information should not be secret. If the possibility of one or two people or companies making a tremendous commercial gain from the provisions of the Act became an issue then we would examine the matter as the Act is not intended to provide for this. Looking at the efforts of the company involved I do not think the Act will permanently provide bread and butter for it.

There was a genuine issue regarding staffing in the Office of the Information Commissioner. That has now been addressed, recruitment is underway and I will certainly review it again. When the commissioner raised the issue of staffing we discussed it with the Minister for Finance and did not have too much difficulty in getting reasonable agreement for additional staff. Some delays enunciated should not exist, although the particular ones raised by Senator O'Dowd raise very sensitive and complicated legal matters and it is less clear how we should deal with them. However, as we learn from the process we should be able to speed up the response to such requests. I certainly do not want to see an increase in the number of requests being appealed to the commissioner. The appeal figure is around the international norm and I want to see as rapid a response as possible.

I agree with Senator Ryan that most trawling requests can be managed through discussions with requesters, something which is done. Of course, not all requesters will be co-operative. It is very easy to deal with a request which seeks specific information. Much time can be saved when the freedom of information officer talks to the requester to find out the precise nature of the information sought. Not all requesters are co-operative when it comes to trawling because many of whom are trawling not for some specific answers but wondering what might turn up. This costs the State and Departments an enormous amount of time. I think there is an issue to be addressed in this regard without in any way limiting the Act.

The suggestion regarding indexing and publishing information after it has been given out is interesting and is something I would like to examine. If a request is made for information and a fortnight later another person submits the same request, they cannot automatically be given the same information, which is a bit ridiculous. Earlier I mentioned the case of 1,000 similar requests being made and the Department packaging the information and making it available to those who wished to go to the Department to read it. We will be addressing such issues when I have had time to consider them.

I am glad the notion that public servants would not now put things on the record in case it is covered by the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act was raised. This is not the case for two reasons. There might have been an early temptation to do this, but the waffle has been dropped and good and proper information is being given to Ministers or whoever else and that is kept as part of the record. People are more conscious of the quality of their information as it will be available on the public record. We are doing away with the boloney and double-speak which might have existed in the past, which is very positive.

The problem for an official who does not write down the information is that 12 months down the road there will be no records if a request is made, which is serious. Somebody will have to account in such a circumstance as trying to recollect what was said will not be good enough and will not stand up. Therefore, not having proper records protects nobody. In fact the opposite is true, something which is clearly understood. There might have been one or two places in the early days of the legislation where this arose, but suddenly everybody realised that was not the way forward. I am confident that the records will be kept and that they will be qualitatively much better then previously.

Regarding company legislation, Senators will be aware that considerable progress has been made in dealing with non-compliance in relation to filing accounts. Many companies are being very quickly struck off, which was not so in the past and is something we all encourage.

I thank all Senators for their contributions. It has been a very valuable debate. There is a proposal to include institutes of technology and we are negotiating the final details with the third level sector which should conclude very shortly.

Mr. Ryan

Is there a problem?

Mr. Cullen

I am not suggesting there is a problem. It is a matter of how we set up the dynamics in terms of training people. As I said earlier, without training the Act would not have worked as well. The Irish approach of rolling out the provisions of the Act rather than including everything including the kitchen sink from the outset, which could have resulted in the working of the Act collapsing, has proved to be the correct approach. As we roll it out, everything is working extremely well and more than 170 bodies are now covered under the legislation.

Mr. Ryan

Does the Minister of State have any thoughts on retrospection?

Mr. Cullen

There is retrospection on personal information, as the Deputy will be aware, and to some degree there is retrospection in that if a current issue is raised in a request, information that is germane to it must be made available. I have not had any major problems in this area. Nobody has come to me from anywhere suggesting that if certain additions were made the operation of the Act would be completely different. What we are doing is good. However, I will examine the retrospection issue and ascertain whether we need to go down that road.

The Act is working well and everybody understands it. I thank Senators for their contributions, which were greatly appreciated, and, in particular, Senator Mooney's comment in regard to libraries, a valuable asset, which is worth examining in another context.

Mr. Ryan

I thank the Minister of State for both his contributions. They were forthcoming, frank and very much in the spirit of the legislation.

An Cathaoirleach

When is it proposed to sit again?

Mr. Mooney

At 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 12 April 2000.