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

I thank Mr. Sheridan for his attendance and wish to tease out a few points on which I seek his views. On the issue of search and retrieval, we concentrate a lot on the fees and there is an emerging consensus, although it might not yet have landed on the desks of those officials who are drafting the legislation, that most people now accept the cost of processing the application fee is far greater than the value of the fee. Consequently, it actually is a net cost to the Irish taxpayer to have that fee in place to start with. However, I will move on to the second aspect pertaining to the search and retrieval fee. I produced draft legislation last summer, namely, the Freedom of Information (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill. The Minister accepted it in principle and it fed into the process in which we now are engaged. Last February, I tabled a series of parliamentary questions about the search and retrieval fees. The reason was that something came up in the budget announced more than a year ago and I was interested in the reason the Minister made a statement.

I put in a request to the Department of Finance to give me the submissions that were received on that issue. After some time I got a letter back saying that the search and retrieval fees would be €1,300. I did not proceed. That was the end of that request. It just killed it stone dead. That prompted me to submit a parliamentary question to every Department. Mr. Sheridan may even have seen them. Many Departments charge no search and retrieval fee. The Department of Social Protection charged no fee. As a matter of policy it gives out the information. For some, such as the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, the average fee was only €8.

The reply from the Minister for Justice Departments, and Equality was that he had received 579 fees last year, of which six attracted a fee to the total value of €756. This equates to an average search and retrieval fee of €130. The maximum fee in that Department for processing a freedom of information request was €15,664. The Minister said one request did not proceed as a consequence of non-payment of the fee. It must have been that one. Much attention is paid to the initial fee but the search and retrieval fee can be off-putting too. I propose that there be a maximum search and retrieval fee. Could Mr. Sheridan give me his view on that? I have posed three specific questions.