Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Select Sub-Committee on Public Expenditure and Reform
Freedom of Information Bill 2013: Committee Stage (Resumed)
5:10 pm
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source
To the members of the committee, he stated:
He gave an example of a request to all councils in Britain on how much they spent on biscuits, which request one could construe as vexatious. He pointed out, however-----
On fees and vexatious requests, the issue is understanding what makes a vexatious request vexatious. We should not be conflating a vexatious request with one that is a little difficult, annoying, embarrassing or persistent. For example, one cannot have a vexatious requester. The Commons justice committee examined how someone who made a lot of freedom of application requests could be classified as a vexatious requester. That is a point we strongly argue against. Just because someone makes a lot of requests does not necessarily mean they are not valid or valuable. Just because a person may have made a vexatious request once before does not mean future requests will be vexatious.
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