Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

In substance the Deputy has asked five supplementary questions, which in a sense are very remote from the original question he raised. On his first question, of course I bring new ideas into this Department. However, I am content at this stage to explore those new ideas with my officials so that we can formulate them as concrete proposals in the Estimates cycle and in the presentation of the annual budget.

The Deputy proposed the four specific ideas. First, appointments to State boards are dealt with through Acts of the Oireachtas. In general the Acts prescribe the form for the appointment of particular members. The form and procedure for the appointment of members of various boards varies. Some appointments are made by the Government and in those cases a proposal must be brought by the relevant Minister to the Government for a Government decision on the appointment. In other cases appointments are left to Ministers. Some legislation prescribes exactly the qualifications and background, including vocational background or being a member of the public service or designated member of the public service. Statutes often lay out these matters regarding appointments to State boards. There is no uniform formula for appointing people to State boards and in the course of our debates on individual items of legislation questions are raised as to how appointments should be made. It is for line Ministers to appoint persons of suitable qualifications to boards who can discharge their duties in the public interest. It is not the responsibility of the Minister for Finance to second guess the wisdom of Ministers' selections. In my Department I must fill certain positions on boards and I fill them in accordance with their statutory purposes. I am not clear what new policy directive is open to me in this area.

I commented on freedom of information legislation during a recent conference on the Freedom of Information Act, hosted by the Ombudsman. I made the point that the introduction of a very small charge in 2003 was a desirable decision in value for money terms in that there was a disproportion between the cost of processing certain requests and the amount of information elicited from them. As a result, a small charge was introduced in 2003. It has not yet been increased and I have no proposals to increase it. It is a valuable deterrent to abuse of the system in putting the public service under a huge burden to furnish information in a disproportionate manner. I do not propose to change that.

Another aspect of freedom of information that is often canvassed is the disclosure of Government records. As Deputy Burton is aware, the original legislation envisaged that disclosure would be made after five years, and it is now made after ten years. We will now begin to see documents of the Governments that sat in 1997 and 1998. That is a reasonable period of time and I cannot take issue with it. On the Garda Síochána, again I am guided by the view of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, which is that there are important security considerations involved although I see no harm in an exchange of opinion between senior Garda officers and their correspondents in other forces where freedom of information experimentation has taken place.

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