Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

They may be part of the deliberative process and that is why so many documents are not put in the public domain on a daily basis. While one might genuflect at the altar of transparency too easily, one can do that at the cost of having frank and proper deliberation of important issues of Government and the development of public policy in a way that can be restricted by freedom of information from time to time. This is the basic principle of Cabinet confidentiality. If it were to be held in a Big Brother scenario where everyone could watch the proceedings, there might not be the proper exchanges one would expect in those circumstances.

The question was asked about what sanctions exist. Ultimately, the purpose of the mandatory duty to comply is to try to improve the quality and timing of the information provided by the HSE to the Minister. Ultimately, there is a sanction which is that a board may be removed under section 14 of the Health Act, but one would hope that this would not be required too often. The general purpose of this section is to improve the general culture of the transposition of information to the Minister and, in turn, to the Oireachtas, in order to improve accountability. For those reasons I do not intend to accept these amendments.

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