Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There is a public service obligation in the case of transport and one can walk through the forests which are vital parts of our heritage. Saying something is a commercial operation and, therefore, the catch-all term of "commercial sensitivities" should insulate it from public scrutiny is unacceptable, particularly when there are major question marks over what is happening in Coillte or, in an example close to me, Dún Laoghaire Harbour. The public believes it to be theirs and they are right. People want to know what the hell is going on there, why the CEO pays himself massive amounts of money and why hundreds of thousands of euro have been paid to consultants in developing elaborate plans for the harbour, none of which has ever materialised. That it belongs to the people is also true of every other harbour and airport in the country.

I do not have time to go through every individual body, but the amendment I will formally move - I have tabled one or two, but I must go now - would require everything to be included. The onus should be on those bodies to make a case as to why particular FOI requests would prejudice their ability to function or disadvantage them. We start with the presumption that all public bodies must provide the information. If they have a problem with this, we can set up a mechanism to allow them to make a case in order that they would not be disadvantaged. That is the other option, but the Minister has never addressed it, despite this and previous discussions. Let us have the presumption that information should be freely available in all of these bodies unless there is a particular problem, at which point a body could make a case. Someone we trusted could adjudicate on the rights and wrongs of that request. That would be a reasonable approach. It is also the approach proposed by groups such as Transparency International and just about everyone else who gave expert testimony on this subject.