Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 2 February 2022
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services
Vote 11 - Public Expenditure and Reform (Revised)
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances (Revised)
Vote 14 - State Laboratory (Revised)
Vote 15 - Secret Service (Revised)
Vote 17 - Public Appointments Service (Revised)
Vote 18 - National Shared Services Office (Revised)
Vote 19 - Office of the Ombudsman (Revised)
Vote 39 - Office of Government Procurement (Revised)
Vote 43 - Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (Revised)
Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source
Just by way of background, as the Deputy is aware, we are doing a major review of the FOI legislation. We have already held one round of public consultation and we had more than 1,200 submissions, so there is a huge amount of interest in it. In the coming months I hope to bring proposals to the Government for legislation to reform, modernise and update our freedom of information system. The FOI unit within my Department does not process FOI requests that go to all of the Government, it only deals with the ones that come to the Department. It also provides support and policy advice at a central level to all of the other FOI officers that are across the system. It is important to be clear on what we do. We do manage and have responsibility for the overall policy on FOI, but the FOI office in my Department only deals with the freedom of information requests that come in to us.
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