Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to object to the taking of Committee Stage of this legislation today. I say that on the basis that, at the 11th hour, the Minister has introduced a very substantial amendment to the legislation relating to the fees regime. The Minister and the committee are aware that the issue of fees was the most contentious item in respect of the restoration of full freedom of information legislation. The Minister has, at the 11th hour, essentially gutted this legislation and put up impossible barriers and unreasonable blockages in respect of freedom of information.

It is my belief that, given the significance of this amendment, far from taking the Committee Stage today, what we should do is adjourn our considerations and ask stakeholder bodies, like the National Union of Journalists, Transparency International and other stakeholders who appeared before this committee on the basis of the original drafting of the legislation, to come before the committee and to tease out, from their perspective, the consequences of the Minister's amendment. On that basis , we need a ministerial response and, I would hope, a reconsideration of these very retrograde amendments. I do not think it acceptable that, at the last minute, the Minister in a sort of cynical and sneaky way moves an amendment such as this simply on the basis that he has the numbers from his Government colleagues on this committee to sneak it through.

The intention of this legislation was to undo the damage of 2003, when freedom of information was gutted. This amendment sets the clock back and does even more damage than 2003. I am proposing, and I would ask my committee colleagues to support me, that this matter be put back and that, as I have said, we ask those stakeholders to come before the committee to tease out the implication of the Minister's last-minute amendments.