Mr. Gavin Sheridan:

The exemptions generally start from section 19 in the legislation. For section 19 the proposed amendment is to lengthen Cabinet access. In the 2003 amendment Act that Fianna Fáil brought in, the five-year rule for access to communications and Cabinet records was increased to a ten-year rule. The proposed legislation proposes to bring that back from ten years to five, which is a good thing. The most commonly used exemptions in my experience are section 27, which is commercial sensitivity, and section 28, which is personal information. Unfortunately, I increasingly see the exemptions applied incorrectly. I may get a reply from an FOI officer saying that certain records have been exempted for personal information reasons, but I may have submitted the same request before to another Department which said it was not personal, or I may have successfully appealed the issue to the Information Commissioner but that did not trickle down to the FOI officer, so I have to appeal it again. I go back through the €15, €75 and €150 process but I do not get any of that money back. The €75 goes, whether I am successful or not. The €150 to the Information Commissioner comes back only if one reaches a settlement with the Government authority. If one cannot reach agreement at settlement one loses €150 through the process and the Information Commissioner will make a decision at some point. It can take six months to three years to get a decision because of the resources available to the Information Commissioner.

The exemptions are generally applied inconsistently. That goes back to the issue of whether there is adequate training for FOI officers in all Departments and agencies covered by the Act. Maybe when the Act is extended as proposed under this legislation it should make a point of stating that training should be done consistently and regularly across the public service, because I increasingly see that sections are not applied correctly. Often spurious refusals are made and one is left in the invidious position of wondering whether to spend the €75 and €150 fees just to make a point. If the upfront fees did not exist, the process would be much more efficient.

On a related point, a €37,000 bonus was handed back as a result of a journalist's FOI request and story. Does that €37,000 count against all the future FOI requests from that journalist? No, it does not. The taxpayer, however, obtained a net benefit from that process because money was returned that probably should not have been paid. These issues with regard to the approach to accessing information need to be factored in. A total of €90,000 a year is brought in as fees but much of it is lost in administration. That is not very effective and does not take into account the broader benefits of better records management. It is the job of journalists to hold authority to account and money comes back to the State as a result of that process.