Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I welcome the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, and his officials. The purpose of the meeting is to consider the Freedom of Information Bill 2013 which was referred to the select sub-committee by Dáil Éireann on 3 October 2013. Is it agreed to conclude consideration of the Bill today?

Deputies:

Not agreed.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I propose that if we run on and do not conclude, we will suspend at 9 p.m. and will take a 15 minute break around 7 p.m., if that is agreeable. Agreed.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I want to object to the taking of Committee Stage of this legislation today. I say that on the basis that, at the 11th hour, the Minister has introduced a very substantial amendment to the legislation relating to the fees regime. The Minister and the committee are aware that the issue of fees was the most contentious item in respect of the restoration of full freedom of information legislation. The Minister has, at the 11th hour, essentially gutted this legislation and put up impossible barriers and unreasonable blockages in respect of freedom of information.

It is my belief that, given the significance of this amendment, far from taking the Committee Stage today, what we should do is adjourn our considerations and ask stakeholder bodies, like the National Union of Journalists, Transparency International and other stakeholders who appeared before this committee on the basis of the original drafting of the legislation, to come before the committee and to tease out, from their perspective, the consequences of the Minister's amendment. On that basis , we need a ministerial response and, I would hope, a reconsideration of these very retrograde amendments. I do not think it acceptable that, at the last minute, the Minister in a sort of cynical and sneaky way moves an amendment such as this simply on the basis that he has the numbers from his Government colleagues on this committee to sneak it through.

The intention of this legislation was to undo the damage of 2003, when freedom of information was gutted. This amendment sets the clock back and does even more damage than 2003. I am proposing, and I would ask my committee colleagues to support me, that this matter be put back and that, as I have said, we ask those stakeholders to come before the committee to tease out the implication of the Minister's last-minute amendments.

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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The changes to the new FOI Bill should be something very positive and there are some positive things in the Bill. However, the proposed amendments that were issued on Friday have been met with the reaction by experts in the field - sensible professionals such as the NUJ, lawyers and academics - that they potentially signal the death of freedom of information in Ireland. We do not know whether that is true but I believe what they are saying, across the board, is sufficiently serious that we should pause Committee Stage. As a committee and having done a lot of work on this, we should invite those like the NUJ, academics and other experts back in to discuss the potential of the proposed changes to the fees structure. This is very serious. The experts are telling us this will eradicate meaningful FOI in Ireland. We, as a committee, have a responsibility to listen to them, to be informed by them and then to re-engage with the Minister on this Committee Stage. I propose that we would invite them in and then re-engage on Committee Stage at the earliest possible opportunity.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I want to join with those sentiments. It has been portrayed and accepted by many that this Bill was going to undo the introduction of fees that was contained in the amendment of the fees some years ago. However, the new section not only copper-fastens most of the application fees, it introduces a new range of application fees whereby one request can result in an organisation deciding that the request goes to four different parts of the organisation and, therefore, it charges four separate fees.

In addition, as I said on Second Stage, this committee had considered the review of non-disclosure provisions in accordance with the information Act - the section 2 report. The outgoing Information Commissioner, in a report to the committee, discussed the 100 secrecy provisions that are embedded in several items of legislation across all Government Departments and recommended that 52 of these secrecy provisions be deleted. That exercise should have been completed and taken on board, and a decision should have been made by the Department as to whether it accepts those recommendations. For us to proceed now, and then have a debate on whether the 52 secrecy provisions that are embedded in other items of legislation should have been dealt with in this legislation, is too late and comes after the fact. There are a couple of reasons that more work needs to be done before this can be finalised on Committee Stage.

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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It takes some neck that the last speaker, who effectively emasculated the 1997 legislation in 2003, would come in to lecture us about the effectiveness or otherwise of what is proposed. Having said that, I think members have been put in somewhat of an invidious position because of the late changes announced by the Minister in his amendments in recent days. It does, to some extent, make it more difficult to embrace the kind of pre-legislative scrutiny we embarked upon, as a committee, not just on this legislation but in other areas, where it has worked well. In fact, in recent days we have, I regret to say, seen evidence of the consequences of legislation that is rushed. In that context, I have some sympathy for the points of view being raised.

Nonetheless, I believe it is possible for us to proceed with Committee Stage today because, unless we gallop through, we are unlikely to reach the controversial elements of the legislation. I believe it would be opportune, in the interim, if the Minister and his Department would circulate us with some briefing documentation on where the amendments that have emerged have come from. We have not had sight of them and we do not know the rationale behind them. As a committee, we engaged quite effectively with other bodies in the context of this legislation to date. On that basis, we could proceed. We are not likely to reach the relevant sections today and it would give the Minister an opportunity to brief the committee more comprehensively in the context of the amendments that have been suggested.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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An enormous amount of discussion has taken place in this regard and it is one of the flagship Bills that I want to bring through to greatly expand the capacity of freedom of information in this State. I welcome the pre-legislative scrutiny this committee did and the submissions we received in regard to it.

Although we will be dealing with some 90 amendments, there was, I suppose, one contentious issue where we had not got agreement, and that was on the issue of fees. If we look at all OECD countries, with some exceptions - and we might be a little jaundiced about the full volume of information that is "free" in some of the exceptions, like Russia - most charge some level of retrieval or processing fees because there is an actual cost involved. I have been very frank and open in this regard from the very beginning. The approach was to retain a front fee of €15, which has been the fee for a decade, and to then mitigate subsequent fees, for example, for appeals and so on, as is well known and has been debated.

Before people lose the run of themselves, and I will take as long as people want on these matters, the only new issue is to be explicit about disaggregating totally unrelated questions that are lumped together. One can argue there should be no fees regime at all, and I would be sympathetic to that in normal circumstances. However, when we are in the situation where I have to recommend and vote for prescription charge fees for medical card holders and for fees for accident and emergency and so on, I think it reasonable to seek a front fee of €15 for an FOI request when the average cost of processing such a request is €600.

The amendment that has caused some controversy in the last few days, and it surprises me that it is of controversy, is to be explicit in regard to manifestly separate questions that have in recent times been lumped together. When we get to it, I will circulate examples of completely different issues being lumped into a Department.

I will give one example of an FOI request submitted to the Department of Taoiseach. It inquired in some detail about a number of matters: the arrangements for the inauguration of the President, the cost, the invitations issued and all the rest; all correspondence related to the Magdalen laundry cases; the information technology used in the Department of the Taoiseach; and all uses to which the Government jet had been put. All of this was purported to be part of one request, but manifestly it was not. There are even more egregious examples of requests that run to pages on completely separate issues. Where a request has many subsets, it will be deemed to be one request. There is no issue with such a request. That will be clear in the legislation and guidelines because one of the difficulties with FOI requests, as explained to the committee in the past, was that there were no common guidelines or common implementation procedures adopted across Departments. I want this to be made clear now, as I know it suits the agenda of some people to say the legislation has been gutted or made impossible to deal with.

I am very proud of this ground breaking legislation. It establishes a number of key statutory principles governing the operation of FOI legislation. It creates a legal presumption that official records requested will be released unless an exemption is provided for in primary legislation. It strongly promotes the proactive release of official information by public bodies. It requires public bodies to draw attention to the scope to obtain records through other access regimes also.

I want a culture of open data which we are going to create. I have made the determination that in the current climate we have to have some fee regime and there is a fee per request. One cannot in all conscience have such a regime and yet allow somebody to submit an entirely different set of requests and call it just one request as then one undermines the principle and could do away with fees. In less strained economic times I would not advocate having a charge to access any information. That is true for a lot of things we have had to do in recent times where we have made charges for things that in better times I certainly would not like to see charges. As I said, if we are now charging for prescriptions for medical card holdersm, is it reasonable to charge something towards the cost of retrieval of information? This does not apply to requests for personal information which account for 70% of all such requests, for which the service is free and will remain so. However, some FOI requests are very complicated and require hugely demanding work. As I said, I will circulate examples to the committee. Let me give an example of how completely extraneous matters are bolted together to avail of the one charge of €15, which sometimes are submitted by big publishing houses. Such requests cost the State thousands of euro to process because they are all different. I think that is reasonable, but I we will deal with the matter when we come to it because the legislation is ground breaking.

One thing about which I am bemused is that it has taken me one year to get traction with the media on this legislation. When it was all good news, I was hard pressed to get a line in any newspaper on the restoration of the FOI regime, but if there is an issue of controversy, I am suddenly invited by the media and it becomes an issue of importance. We should focus on how we can put the best possible regime in place. I am open to any argument on the amendments tabled because I want us to reach a consensus on these matters as best we can. I have fought hard with everybody to reach the most advanced position in tandem with the commitments made in the programme for Government. It did not strike me that it had not been well signalled, but if we were going to charge €15 per item, obviously completely extraneous items bolted together, as seen in the documentation circulated, cannot be construed as being part of the same request. That is the net issue that has proved controversial.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I have listened to what the Minister has said. Funnily, I was in the House when the alleged butchering of FOI legislation took place and fees were introduced. Later in the debate no doubt I will quote what various members of the Minister's party said about the matter at the time, but he now seems to agree that it was right. He has come around to the point of view that it is right to have charges. I remember that officials gave the Minister at that time the script, that we wanted to stop egregious and vexatious requests so as not to waste the public's time.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I did not go near that.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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No interruptions, please.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I said "the Minister at that time" was given the script by his officials stating "we have to introduce these fees because some people are asking outrageous, egregious, repetitive and vexatious questions and we must stamp it out". It sounds to me like that the same official has written the Minister's script, or it was written by somebody well tutored by the same official. That is the gist of what the Minister is saying today, that somebody who submits a request to an organisation about a pension scheme, for example, will be told that "it involves the audit committee and you have to pay a fee to see the audit committee's file. It also involves the finance department-----

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The Deputy is deliberately misconstruing what I am saying.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I will bring the Minister back in later.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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-----and the HR department."

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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One request.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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This is the way officials in the public service will interpret the legislation, that a request can cover a couple of Departments. What we have here are some bad cases where people tried to save €60. Is the Minister here today to talk about saving €60 or getting an extra €60 from a journalist? Is that the essence of his amendment? He is making the case why somebody should have to paying five charges of €15 instead of just one. The matter is so trivial that we should not be discussing it. At this point we should not even be discussing the charge of €15. However, the Minister is committed to charging a fee of €15 and we are debating whether we can get two or three charges of €15 from a journalist. He has constructed exactly the same case involving repetitive, vexatious and extensive requests.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I made none of those points.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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If we pass this provision, how much extra will the Minister get from the double or treble charging of the €15 fee? He might make an extra €100 in the year in a Department, but it will cost ten times that amount to process and segregate the information requests. What we are doing is utterly trivial on the basis of a few specific cases. There are 10,000 FOI requests every year. It is trivial to pick out five, ten or 20 - I do not know exactly how many there are - the 1% of cases that involve a number of issues. Officialdom is well capable and has the ability to segregate requests.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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First, it is really dishonest for the Minister to use the introduction of prescription fees and other cuts over which the Government has presided over as cover for introducing in this legilation multiple fees. Second, he knows, as we all do, that the reason the fees issue is controversial in the course of this debate at this committee is that it is accepted across the board that having a fee acts as a disincentive for people in seeking information. That is the position. Third, there are provisions within the legislation to deal with vexatious requests, which is correct and as it should be.

The multiple item requests cited by the Minister are a consequence of the introduction of fees. Naturally, where people are being charged unfairly, they will try to cover as many angles as they can in a single request. If the Minister wants to do away with this practice of throwing in the kitchen sink in a single FOI request, he should get rid of the fees.

I want to be in a position to support the restoration of freedom of information legislation.

I have made that clear to the Minister. The manner in which he has gone about all of this makes an absolute farce of his so-called reforms and a farce of the notion of pre-legislative phases at this committee. In fact, it makes a farce of the entire debate and hearings, the ritual we went through here. Not alone is he introducing an amendment that will affect not a single fee but multiple fees and upfront payments. He is doing it at the 11th hour in a way that I consider to be most unedifying for him as Minister, the Minister who proclaims to be committed to openness and transparency. There is nothing open or transparent about this. From my point of view, it is not sufficient at this juncture for the Minister to circulate the document to us or to tell us that his officials will give us a briefing. What we actually need is space, on the basis of his amendment. to hear from the National Union of Journalists, NUJ, the academics and the stakeholders their view of the consequences of this amendment and to allow us to consider it and even for the Minister to consider it. He might just be wrong.

If I am not mistaken, in 2003 when Fianna Fáil gutted the legislation, this Minister and his party were vociferous in opposing those charges because, at that stage, he understood the consequences of those charges. He was right then and he is wrong now.

Given the level of scepticism in the broad public around politics and political processes and openness and transparency, this is a very bad turn of events. Reinstating freedom of information should be a good moment for us yet, by his own actions at the 11th hour, in introducing a measure such as this he has, in fact, derailed what should have been a good news story. I reiterate my call that we halt proceedings at this stage, do things correctly, and give this committee its place. We are not here as extras to fill up the air time and then the Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin, the Government or anybody else ploughs on and does whatever they want. That is unacceptable for any parliamentarian and it is unacceptable for this committee.

The reasonable thing for the Minister to do, given the implications of this amendment, is to hit the pause button, bring in the relevant stakeholders and allow them, with us, to tease out the implications of this amendment and then we can proceed. I would hope, having heard from those stakeholders, the Minister would revise his position and deliver legislation we could all support and stand over that was truly about freedom of information and not giving the veneer of information but actually holding things back and throwing up obstacles in people's way. Let us bear in mind that it is not only journalists who make FOI requests. Citizens make them too and NGOs and all manner of bodies.

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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I think everyone in the committee and the Minister and his officials would agree that this is really important legislation and that we need to reverse the changes made in 2003 and get back to the spirit of the original Labour Party Freedom of Information Act 1997. There is a procedural issue for the committee. The Minister has outlined briefly the reasons he believes the changes introduced in the amendments on Friday are not terribly important. That is fine. Mr. Gavin Sheridan who appeared before the committee is on the record in respect of the amendments on Friday as saying: "If passed, freedom of information is dead." Mr. Gavin Sheridan is not an alarmist. He is an expert in this area. He worked on the Anglo tapes and is a respected journalist.

Mr. Séamus Dooley, National Union of Journalists, said in a press release that came out in the past hour: "The new charges would make the use of FOI unaffordable and would undermine the significant reforms contained in the Act." Ms Jane Suiter, a respected academic, was on radio this morning speaking about it as well. Therefore, as a committee we have a decision to make. We have two conflicting views on very important legislation that we all want to get right and on which we have all spent a great deal of time. As the views of the Minister and respected experts in this area are so different and the language that sensible people are using is so strong, the only sensible thing to do is to pause committee proceedings. We can come back as soon as possible but let us invite the experts back in and understand as a committee the reason they are so strong in their opposition to the amendments. Ideally, the committee can and should give its opinion back to the Minister. Let us do this again in ten days time. I hope the Minister is right. As a committee we have to listen when the NUJ and respected academics use the language they have used in the past few days. As Deputy Creed said we could pause committee proceedings on the basis that we are all present and have an open debate and hear the Minister's position on why he believes the changes are not so big. We could invite in the experts, have a meeting with them in the next few days and proceed again with the Minister within the next two weeks. For the committee, it appears that is the reasonable and responsible thing to do. At the right time, perhaps the Chairman will tell me when it is, that is what I would like to formally propose.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I will invite in the Minister and then move to the question. Procedurally, the first question that has to be asked is that the committee continue its business today. If an amendment to the motion is carried any other proposals would fall. Therefore, the amendment would have to fall for the proposals to be taken. I invite the Minister to respond, after which I shall move to the question.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The people on this committee worked very hard on this legislation and have given very valuable advices to me, much of which I have taken, in respect of this legislation and other reforming legislation that we want to get enacted, such as the whistleblowers legislation and so on, before Christmas if possible. I certainly do not want the enormous volume of work done by the officials in my Department, me, the committee and others to be derailed by what I regard as a small issue. The bigger issue is that of fees. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald is right. The net issue is whether there should be an upfront fee. I discerned from the beginning, we discussed it here and I am aware members opposite have a different view, that in the current economic climate it is reasonable to have a tokenistic contribution of €15 to an FOI that, on average, costs €600 to process. If we are to have a fee of €15 we cannot completely undermine that by allowing somebody to put in 15 manifestly separate questions unrelated to each other and pretend that it is a single request. Both of those are not compatible because it would be unfair to a person who puts in a single request and pays the €15.

If we do not legislate for it, journalists or anybody else will put in requests for 40 or 140 questions and pretend it is a single issue. In that event, we might as well come to grips with the issue that we should abolish a fee. That is the net issue. We cannot have both. That is why the notion that this aggregation of manifestly separate questions is a surprise or a gutting or an undermining is just not right. It was always my position that they would be separate questions. There can be a variety of subsets of the same issue. This goes back to the point made by Deputy Fleming about different units or different sections of the Department. All of that will be one FOI request if it is on the same issue, whether to different sections of the HSE, or different sections of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. There can be any number of subsets of it, if is the same question. However, when they are manifestly different questions they cannot pretend to be about the same issue. I want to work with the committee on this issue. That is my understanding and my intention. I want to ensure that is what is done in practice. I hear what Deputy Fleming is saying. He is saying that civil servants, somehow, will undermine that. I do not believe that but let us make sure it does not happen. That is why I am drawing up, in parallel to this legislation, a code of practice that will be implemented by every FOI officer in every agency and Department. I want them all trained as provided for in the legislation.

It is a legal requirement to be operating on the same manual and on the same basis so that one does not get different responses to FOI, as one currently gets depending the agency or Department to which one submits it because there is not a commonality of interpretation, and as I want to do away with.

I will undertake to bring that code of conduct back here to this committee. We, together, will nail it down to ensure that that intention is, in fact, what is nailed into the way and practice of the FOI implementation. I hope that will meet the requirements of the Deputies opposite.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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As there are many speakers indicating, I will put the question.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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A Chathaoirligh,-----

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I will put the question. We can return to it in the debate.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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We cannot return to it because once the Chairman puts the question, the Committee Stage commences.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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That is correct.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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With all due respect to the Chairman and to the Minister, there is little point in the Minister telling us that he will bring the code of conduct here for us to jointly pin down. My understanding was that we were going to jointly pin down the legislation.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Sorry, would Deputy McDonald turn off-----

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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The draft legislation-----

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Would Deputy McDonald excuse me a second?

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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-----that the Minister presented was very different.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Would Deputy McDonald excuse me a second? Would she turn off her telephone? The people cannot hear her.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I do not have a telephone.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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There is a telephone ringing around her. She should turn off her telephone.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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If the Cathaoirleach does not mind,-----

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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The next time-----

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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No, no.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I ask Deputy McDonald to hear me for one moment because this will go on for hours.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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It is not.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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This meeting will go on for hours. If I make an interjection, regardless of whether it is the Minister, Deputy McDonald or any other member in this room, the Deputy must be silent. Is that okay? So that I do not have to be on me feet for the remainder of the evening, I ask Deputy McDonald to respect the Chair. I have allowed her back in and will allow Deputy Donnelly back in, but the Deputy should respect my position up here as well. Is that okay? Deputy McDonald may continue but if I interject again, I ask her to let me interject.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I have made the point on the code of conduct. I take no comfort from that. The Minister will bring it here, we will chat about it, and the Minister will go off and do whatever he will do according to the evidence to date.

Second, it is entirely disingenuous for the Minister to state that this was always his intention. He made clear his intention that there would be a fee, but he has introduced an amendment late in the day that splits up what he calls manifestly different questions in a single matter. It also makes a request for up-front fees. It is a significant change-----

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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It was always the way.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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-----in respect of the fees themselves. It is unacceptable for the committee that we operate in this way.

If I might respectfully say to the Cathaoirleach whose position I respect, whatever the party politics of an issue like this, there is a bigger issue for the committee and how we work. If we are being told that there will be pre-legislative scrutiny and that this is a collective endeavour, particularly on something as important as this, and then the Minister at the eleventh hour brings in a significant change to the legislation in this manner and we ask for further time for consideration and for experts to come in and give a view, and that gets knocked on the head, that makes a bit of a farce of our proceedings.

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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Much of the debate so far has been on the substance, which is whether or not these multifaceted matters are right. The issue for committee is a procedural issue. The issue is that we have experts who have appeared before this committee as part of the pre-legislative work who, whether correct or not, state that the amendments that have been brought in will kill all of the good trying to be achieved in this legislation. The issue, right now, for this committee is not whether or not multifaceted fees should be charged. The issue, on which the Chairman will put the question, is a procedural issue.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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For clarity sake, the question I will be putting is: "That the committee will now commence consideration of the Bill."

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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I believe we should not do that. I would ask the Minister - because the whip is enforced if this kind of question goes to a vote and because, although it may not be done, he may be able to - to let the committee members decide for themselves what they want. On the basis that the experts we have had before this are using such strong language about the changes that are being made, it is incumbent upon us as a committee to hear what they have to say and then come back to this piece legislation.

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Deputy Donnelly covered that in his earlier contribution.

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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I go back to my original observation. There is an issue at stake in respect of the fees and the Minister has outlined his position. It is not impossible for us to do two things simultaneously, one of which is to proceed with the consideration of Committee Stage because we are unlikely to reach the relevant section today anyway.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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It is amendment No. 33.

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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I have seen the observations made by the National Union of Journalists, NUJ, and others. They are vague and all encompassing, but they do not substantiate their concerns in any great detail. It is not impossible for us at the same time to assimilate the views, and to have it circulated to members and consider it, by the time we reach the Committee Stage dealing with amendments to section 12. That is why we should not-----

Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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I suggest that in doing so, the press service, that supports the committee rather than the political parties, might give us a collage of the media coverage we got when this committee published its report. Is Deputy Creed finished?

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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Yes.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I want to make a point because I did not respond. I know the view of the NUJ on fees generally. They have a strong and coherent view that there should be no fees, that information should be free. There are many experts in the area and Deputy Donnelly name checked some of them who hold that principled view, and it is a noble and fine view.

I made a discernment from the beginning in this, which I stated to this committee in the pre-legislative scrutiny, that I believe that there should be, in the current climate where we are charging for a range of essential services, what in many ways is a token charge. A charge of €15 towards a cost on average of €600 is little more than a token and is justified in these circumstances. In better economic times, it is something we might come back on.

If we are to have a fee, obviously, we must ensure that it is applied and not have the pretence that there is a fee that really does not apply because one could put in any number of requests and call it one. If that is the view of the committee, then there is no point in having fees. That undermines the principle of it. I wanted to make the point in relation to the experts. I know what the NUJ will say. They will say, "Have no fees."

It would be worth looking at the practice in other OECD countries because there are different types of fees. I do not want to get bogged down on this one net issue because there is so much good in this Bill, but some countries charge up-front fees such as my proposal of €15 here. I am suggesting that we give free two hours search and retrieval for that. Many other countries have no up-front fee but then they charge search and retrieval fees at an hourly rate and they charge for photocopying. If one goes through all the OECD countries, world leaders in this, such as Canada and New Zealand, charge for this using different mechanisms because there is a real cost to the system of some of the complex demands that are made.

In this, I propose: first, that we hold on to the €15 up-front fee; and second, that one will get two hours' free research for that, which accounts for the vast bulk of non-personal matters - all personal matters, or 70% of all FOIs, are free. On top of that, I am suggesting that we cap the search and retrieval fees at €500 - at present, it is open-ended. In addition, I am reducing all the appeal fees to go to the Information Commissioner, etc. If one looks at it in the round, it is a reasonable set of proposals.

I am open to hear the views of the committee when we get to these matters. I refer to amendment No. 33. I would suggest we proceed, at least up to that. If members want to reflect when we get to that, I am in the hands of the committee. Let us make-----

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is not.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I have been open to any amendment that has been tabled in this regard. With all respect to the representative of Sinn Féin, in terms of openness I will not take any lectures from Sinn Féin.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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How original.