Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I actually had an excellent engagement with the committee at the time when Deputy Fleming was Chairman. We thrashed out many matters. Whatever happened and whatever interactions and concerns there were outside the committee room, I believe the Whip was applied - maybe for the first time in this committee - and when the report came out it amounted to a single paragraph. The rest was annexes and so on with the Departments' reports. If I recall correctly, the paragraph stated "In every instance where the Information Commissioner disagrees with the Minister or vice versa we support the Minister". Clearly, that was disappointing, particularly in light of the excellent engagement we had.

If I may refer to particular conversations, we discussed, for example, section 53 of the Education Act, which is still there and trumps the FOI Act in respect of a citizen's or individual's access rights to inspection reports on schools. I took the view that citizens, parents and families and anybody who wished to see these should have a right to do so. Subsequently, there was quite a brouhaha about access to these school inspection reports and they are now freely available on the website of the Department of Education and Skills. Just before I came out here I looked them up and counted over 2,000 inspection reports that are freely available, yet an individual has no statutory right to see them under FOI. That was one particular issue that arose. As the saying goes, that was then, and I hope we will have a good engagement today and perhaps a different outcome.