Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take Mr. Deering's point about when we are dealing with systems that speak to each other and information management. It can be a big project. I also know from the commentary of those behindkildarestreet.comthat they are not doing it at a huge cost. There are fundraising efforts and all of the rest of it. The Oireachtas website has improved in the last period, but it would be interesting to know for how many Deputies the Oireachtas website is their first port of call as opposed to kildarestreet.com.

This is about the information that is already there and joining the dots. There has to be a starting point.

Just to tie this up, I put in FOI requests quite regularly. I would usually send in one each week. There is no doubt that there has been a change in terms of FOI requests over the last period. My colleague, Deputy Mairéad Farrell, talked about the frustration in terms of getting documents back that have been redacted. The most frustrating thing is when you have to wait six weeks, maybe an extension of time, and then you just get blacked-out sheets back, which is just taking the piss to tell you the God's honest truth. If they are not releasing any information because it has not been provided, then they should tell you straight away and indicated that there are other ways to pursue the information.

There is another matter to which I wish to refer. This is not a Covid issue because it was happening before Covid. I do not have any data and am just going on the basis of my own situation in this regard. It is very rare that FOI requests are dealt with within the original timeframe. Extensions of time are usually applied in respect of requests. In some cases, they are being extended over and over again. That is extremely frustrating. What can be done in this regard?

I wish to refer to a particular case and I am only raising it because it was a public issue. I refer to when FOI requests went to a certain Minister looking for a particular document that we knew said Minister had because it related to the leaking of documents by the Tánaiste in respect of the GP contract. The reply stated that the document did not exist. We then had the situation where, in a separate scenario, a request was submitted and the relevant Deputy got a response back saying that the document did not exist. It was a reasonable request looking for information on mobile phone communications. After details of the matter were put on the floor of the Dáil, the Minister in question released the document two days later.

There is a big issue regarding public documents. This is my big concern. There is a back channel operating in the State. We have FOI in respect of documents that are controlled by the Department. That is fine. We know that documents and communications between Ministers on mobile phones are subject to FOI. The reality is, however, that they are not being sent on to the Department as they are supposed to be. If officials are able to communicate with whomever without forwarding that communication to the Department, this means that a horse and cart has been driven through the freedom of information legislation. Whether the communication is for good or bad, it does not matter. The public has a right to know. If they have that kind of channel, which is outside of their official Oireachtas or ministerial communications through Departments' official email systems, it can be an issue.

Now, we can send direct messages via Twitter, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. I do not know if you can send messages on TikTok. God knows how many other ways people have of communicating. If these messages are not being captured by the relevant Department, then there is a back channel that means that the public, even when requests for information are made, will never have access to the communications between a senior lobbyist for X, Y or Z and a senior Minister. How can that be dealt with? There are already guidelines in place that are supposed to capture this information. However, when we ask the Department, basically it has no robust ways of actually collecting that information, which is not personal information. If the information were in an email, it would be subject to FOI.