Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. We in Fianna Fáil welcome the legislation. The Minister referred to my introduction of a Private Members' Bill last July. It was one of the few Private Members' Bills in the past year that the Government accepted in principle. The Minister deferred Second Stage because he was working on legislation of his own.

This Bill is substantially in line with my proposals and has taken account of the debate on this matter in recent years. I welcome the extension of the legislation's measures to, for example, the administrative functions of the Garda, the NTMA, NAMA, the Central Bank and vocational education committees, VECs. People are probably amazed that VECs were not previously encompassed in the provisions.

I will put a few points to the Minister. He might not have the answers, but the purpose of today's meeting is for us to express opinions that he can take into account. He does not need to accept or reject them now. Rather, he can consider some of our points. I welcome his preliminary response.

Regarding fees, a great falsehood was told about changes to the freedom of information legislation. When fees were introduced for requests for non-personal information, people claimed that doing so destroyed the original Act.

A large proportion of freedom of information requests are from people seeking personal information, in respect of which no fee has ever been charged. While I welcome that this legislation does not propose to introduce a fee in this regard, I note that the €15 fee in respect of third party requests introduced a number of years will remain in place, which is the issue that previously created the most controversy . Fianna Fáil may during Second and Committee Stages of this Bill refer to what Labour Party members previously had to say on this issue. As I recall, every member of the Labour Party was at that time opposed to the introduction of the €15 fee. I note there is no proposal in this Bill to change that. The Minister will, therefore, appreciate that we will come back to this issue.

I will attempt to be of assistance to the Minister on the fees issue. I would ask that his officials take note of the following. When drafting my Private Members' Bill on this issue around the end of February last, I tabled parliamentary questions on search and retrieval fees to each Department. I would like the Minister to deal with this issue, although I do not expect him to do so today.

Following the introduction of last year's budget, I submitted a freedom of information request to the Department of Finance and was told that the cost of retrieving the information I requested would be €1,300, by which I was outraged. I did not proceed with that request. I do not accept that the cost involved was that high. This led me to tabling the parliamentary questions to each Department. I was interested to learn that some Departments have never charged a search and retrieval fee. The Department of Social Protection, which receives the most FOI requests, does not, as a matter of principle, charge any fee. Some Departments charge only €8 or €15 and others charge up to a couple of hundred euro. While the Department of Finance fee was only €83, it discouraged other requests by charging higher fees. The Department of Justice and Equality charged one search and retrieval fee of €15,664.

I would like if the Minister could address the issue of retrieval fees by way of putting in place a maximum fee, say, €100, €200, €300 or whatever other figure he believes appropriate, in this regard. I accept that there is a volume of work involved. Where a person requests a considerable amount of information, he or she could be asked to break down or be more specific in terms of the information being sought. I believe that the fees being charged by some Departments are an abuse of the current system.

I am pleased that new bodies are to be covered by the legislation. However, there are already many exemptions in this regard provided for in current legislation. As I understand it, each committee is asked every three or four years by the information commissioner to carry out a review of these exemptions. While it may be provided that all Departments are subject to FOI requests, as soon as one seeks information on particular issues within Departments, exemptions under specific legislation in this regard are cited. While in some cases requests may be refused for reasons of national security, I believe officials, who are not fully committed to FOI, are using this as an excuse. I ask that most of the current exemptions be removed under this legislation. I would also like to see more specific proposals on the situation in respect of new bodies, for example, the VECs which are now legal entities. It should be stated in the legislation that every new legal entity set up by Government through the Oireachtas is subject to FOI from day one. The usual standard is to establish an organisation and wait for up to three years for it to bed in before imposing FOI on it. However, that stage is never reached. If the culture was forced on them from day one, they would get it right from day one. These are the type of issues about which I am concerned. While I welcome the legislation in general, Fianna Fáil will be tabling a series of amendments to it on Committee Stage.