Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

They try to take something from a good number of the newspapers. The civil servants in my Department that are responsible for the unit will always provide an open invitation to the Green Party, Sinn Féin or to the other parties to look at their work. They have never been anything other than courteous to all parties in the House, regardless of who is in power. Freedom of information requests for copies of the documents which are distributed are frequently made. The documents do not attract much attention because there is nothing in them — they usually comprise paper cuttings which are months out of date. All the information released by the officials under freedom of information could have been acquired by turning on the radio.

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