Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will play the devil’s advocate. I was a member of the committee in 2003 when the then Minister, Charlie McCreevy, reversed the legislation. It was considered to be a retrograde step.

If I could get senior civil servants in here in private session and turned off all the cameras, I would hear words like "frivolous", "vexatious", "fishing exercise" and "unethical". It all boils down to the control of information. As a Government backbencher, I can see the instinct to control information while we talk about open and transparent government. I can see all the arguments being thrown up. Mr. Cullen spoke about complaints about taxi drivers, where he will get the ten mildest complaints. If I speak to someone on the other side, he will say that journalists would select the worst complaint from 1,000 complaints and use it as a banner headline. Those arguments were used privately as a reason for shutting down freedom of information - there were huge costs to Exchequer for fishing exercises to embarrass the Government. We were in opposition at the time and disagreed with it then. Our instinct, and this is where the legislation comes from, is that it is better to move towards more open government.

The Information Commissioner, Emily O'Reilly, appeared before us yesterday and marked 2003 as the watershed moment. After that the interest in FOI dropped down the priority scale, even for those managing it within the public sector.