Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Decisions have not been made on several of these issues and will not be made until the budget so it is important we be allowed to take time in the deliberative process. The Freedom of Information Act facilitates that, specifically allowing for exclusion of information where a decision has not yet been made. Every decision related to social welfare is linked to the budget so those decisions have not been made yet. There are other areas of the report that were excluded because they would disclose positions to be taken in Government negotiations.

We are not trying to keep information from people, we are trying to allow a reasoned debate on the issues. The public knows the issues, everyone knows the schemes and the numbers benefiting from them. No decisions have been made on any issue and the documents provided to the McCarthy group are the very documents the Government will use to make its decisions in the next few weeks.

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