Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I share the Taoiseach's view about the rights of privacy and those of public accountability. It is important to make that distinction. In recent years, while a lot of good and useful material has emerged though freedom of information requests, many replies to parliamentary questions do not provide the expected information. I do not know whether this suggests a trend. It used to be an unwritten rule that Ministers would tell their Secretaries General: "Parliamentary questions are the ultimate democratic weapon for an elected representative, so answer the question and give them the information". When that does not happen it leads to freedom of information requests, which can be broad and extensive, as the Taoiseach has pointed out. In his capacity as Taoiseach, it might be no harm to remind Ministers-----

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