Mr. Gavin Sheridan:

There is and what the Act, as it currently stands, provides for is the information should be given in the format requested, if that is not more difficult to do than in another format. I certainly do not wish to attribute malice to any of this. I would say it is done because it often is not known. In other jurisdictions, if one asks for a particular format, one will get that format. As the Chairman has pointed out, a table is not very useful if it is just a table on a PDF file. I cannot really do anything with it. I cannot carry out simple calculations like pivoting the table within the spreadsheet and cannot analyse, for example, spending data within the spreadsheet. This certainly is an issue and while it already is covered in the Act to an extent, the provisions could be strengthened.

This comes back to a larger issue, which is records management in general within Government authorities. This brings in the reason the fee structure was introduced in the first place - or the purported reason it was introduced - which was that it was a burden on the Department to answer requests. I was in Scotland last week to speak at a conference on freedom of information and I spoke to the Scottish information commissioner on the same subject. She is cognisant of the fact that there is no fee structure in the United Kingdom or in Scotland for upfront fees. They simply take an approach that if one creates better record management structures within government, it becomes more efficient for people to ask for information. Moreover, because there are no upfront fees, it almost forces the hand of the Government to try to be more organised about how requests are handled. If the Government authorities are better organised in respect of their filing systems, it is much easier for them to give out information and they can manage their own records much more efficiently. I studied the 2011 figures from Emily O'Reilly in respect of fees and under the non-personal section, the Government collected €87,000. One issue with that is that the €15 fee actually is costing more to manage itself----