Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Forget about any individual case. Hypothetically speaking, let us say there is communication by text message - which has been around for many years - between a Minister and a fracking company that is lobbying about a licence to frack. That is an official document of the Department and it should be passed on. All Ministers are aware of that. The problem is that we have FOI requests going in and we get the answer back to the effect that after reasonably conducting a search of all of the various documents, the Department in question has found that no document exists. What will the Mr. Deering do in a hypothetical scenario such as that, particularly in circumstances where that a Minister then produces the relevant document after public pressure or we find out that it actually exists? What can the Information Commissioner do? That is the issue.

I can appreciate the large amount of communication that people are getting and then perhaps not knowing what to send on, what not to send on and all of that. How can that be tightened up? As I said, not everybody communicates by email anymore. There is also the situation where it is just a phone call and you are never going to be able to record that. How will the Information Commissioner be able to capture that?

It is four weeks for a response, is it not? However, I do not think I have ever gotten a response sooner than four weeks. Four weeks should not be the target, as in, at four weeks exactly a Department will give a response. If the information is readily accessible within the Department, it should be provided within a couple of days.

We are seeing a good example in the Houses of the Oireachtas at the moment on foot of emails we received in recent days regarding information that was previously provided under FOI. A good example of this relates to former office holders and ministerial pensions. This matter has been well played out in the public domain and the information relating to it has always been made available. I have tabled parliamentary questions in respect of this matter in the past and I received the relevant information. That information was also made available through FOI. However, now it is not being made available anymore. We are in a situation where instead of improving transparency, we are in a rearguard action trying to fight for the existing level of access that we had but that we cannot get anymore.