Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

In the interests of the people we serve, I wanted to be practical and pragmatic and take a non-party-political approach to this issue. I carried out my research and decided to draft a Private Members' Bill that would contemplate particular matters about which I am concerned.

The debate has got off to a reasonable start but it is important that it should not become party political. The previous debate in respect of the amending legislation was fractious. I was serving as Chairman of the then Select Committee on Finance and the Public Service at that stage and, on one side, I had the then Minister, Charlie McCreevy, pushing ahead with his proposals while, on the other, Opposition backbenchers were trying to encourage him to row back on them somewhat. Such is the way parties in government work; the Cabinet makes a decision and the subsequent legislation is passed by the Houses.

I paid close attention to the debate that took place on the amending legislation and what has happened since the latter was enacted. Some people will state that restrictions were imposed in respect of certain aspects of the original Act. I wish to reiterate an observation I made on several previous occasions, which is that while the amending legislation did, perhaps, damage the freedom of information process to a degree, the tone of the subsequent debate did even more damage. I will explain what I mean in this regard. As a result of the restrictions to which I refer, namely, the imposition of charges in respect of freedom of information requests, members of the media and people who wanted to make public interest requests became extremely angry. They stated that the then Government had emasculated the legislation.

Between half and three quarters of all freedom of information requests relate to personal information - in other words, information about social welfare claims, HSE matters, local authority issues etc. There has never been a fee for such requests. After that debate, ordinary people making requests for personal information were reading in the newspapers that freedom of information legislation was being curtailed and cut back. This resulted in a reduction in the number of people making non-personal requests. The number making personal requests also dropped, even though there was no logical reason for this, as there was no change in respect of requests for personal information and no fees had been introduced. There was so much in the ether to the effect that the legislation had been curtailed that the public made fewer personal requests because they belieed the legislation had been emasculated. I hope this debate is more measured because it is in our interests to have freedom of information legislation operating effectively.

I have a slight issue with the Minister's reference to restoring the freedom of information Act. I am pleased, however, that he has come into the House and said reform is what he is talking about. There was a time when there were 16,000 requests a year. It is good that we are talking about improving and reforming the legislation.

The Minister has said the specific bodies I have listed are consistent with the ones the Government is considering. I am happy to hear this. There should be greater publication of information in order that there would be less need to submit personal freedom of information requests. Public bodies should be more open to providing personal information for people with whom they deal without the need to go through the freedom of information process. Public servants believe there is legal protection if they release it under freedom of information legislation in cases in which they might not otherwise have that protection. This is something we must examine.

I will not rehash the argument about the provision of information for Oireachtas committees. Occasionally the Committee of Public Accounts asks a public body for information and is not given it; yet when we pick up the Sunday newspapers, the information is there having been sought through a freedom of information request. That is frustrating. I considered the possibility of extending the legislation to individual Members, but I did not want to be accused of introducing legislation that would give Members of the Oireachtas or public representatives superior rights. Therefore, I confined the provision specifically to Oireachtas committees in order that people could not object.

For the Minister's benefit, in case he did not pick up on this, I referred to search and retrieval fees. After the budget last December, I submitted a freedom of information request and in January received a response from the Department of Finance that search and retrieval fees would be €1,200. I abandoned my request, but it immediately made me wonder about search and retrieval fees. I tabled a parliamentary question to every Department on the issue. I do not have my speaking notes in front of me, but seven Departments had maximum search and retrieval fees of less than €500. Some six or seven had fees of between €500 and €700; others had fees of €1,000, while the Department of Justice and Equality charged a figure of €15,000.

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