Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I am against this amendment for the same reason I am against the change as a whole. As I said earlier, I approve of parts of the Bill that seek to secure Cabinet deliberations and papers. What I find difficult is that the fence is so wide. Matters would be much easier if it were narrower. If the exceptions were more clearly drawn and, as Senator O'Meara said, the background papers that help people to come to a decision were available, people would be able to consider the quality of a decision and the real reasons behind it.

I also find it difficult to accept the proposition that every Secretary General deserves to be beatified. We are extremely lucky in terms of the calibre of people employed in the public service. It is somewhat unfair to ask whether I do not trust person A, B or C. Of course I trust them – some of them are very good friends of mine and I have enormous respect for them – but I do not know who will be in their positions ten or 20 years from now. It is wrong to put a Secretary General in the position of having to decide what is in the public interest. I would be happier if a Minister made this decision because he or she must come before the Dáil or Seanad and justify the position, whereas a Secretary General is not obliged to do so.

I speak from having been in this position for a number of years. I worked under the British Official Secrets Act, which I treated with a certain degree of levity. Of all the papers that came across my desk, particularly those dealing with issues such as health, which were classified or confidential, the number that were really capable of damaging the national interest was extremely small. Most of them could have been published in the Belfast Telegraph. In fact, one did read most of them in the Belfast Telegraph, but that is another story. It is too easy to throw up a blanket of public interest immunity and it is unfair not only to give that function to Secretaries General but, as Senator McDowell said, to make it into a duty. There is, in the context of the Act, a tendency to change the burden of proof – to change a presumption of release into a presumption of retention. On the narrow point of making a Secretary General the arbiter of the national interest, I have no difficulty at all with the people currently in those positions. However, I feel it is unfair to give them this function.