Professor Rob Kitchin:

It is not, then, outside FOI. If it were, it would be a big issue.

I believe that the blanket exemption is simply put under the notion of commercial sensitivity, so everything the agency does would be commercially sensitive. I do not accept that this is the case. Many public agencies around the State work with companies. Universities, for example, do a lot of research through Science Foundation Ireland funding, for example, or with companies. We are not exempt from FOI on that, and why would we be? It is public money being used supposedly in the public interest, and it has a commercial angle. Unless there are specific reasons, I would not go with a blanket ban. As Ms Hegarty said, there might be rulings where it is believed to be outside of FOI and someone could go to the Office of the Information Commissioner to get a specific ruling on that. A blanket ban, however, does not seem to be in the public interest. In the past, this was an area in which we had a lot of issues. Let us consider the era of the brown envelope, or the many scandals relating to various planning issues, development sites and land, such as the Liffey Valley site. There were also issues around risks-----