Ms Emily O'Reilly:

No. Under the draft heads of the Bill it is only proposed that a very limited amount - to my mind - of administrative records relating to the Garda be releasable under freedom of information legislation. Even though the records compared to some of the records it would have in regard to its operational work would be pretty anodyne, it is proposed that the power to enter a premises and remove records in regard to the Garda be removed from me. If the Garda say it will not give us records because it does not believe they are administrative records, I have no way, if this goes ahead, of finding out whether they are or not. In other words, I cannot go in and have a look at them and say they are right, they relate to a criminal prosecution or an ongoing investigation and they are administrative records. If I do not see the records in the first place I cannot make that judgment and I think that is wrong.