Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The point I am making is that the real emphasis of the Government should be on reducing the need for Members of the House to have to use freedom of information requests in the first place. Freedom of information legislation is used as a delaying tactic by those who want to prevent information from getting out. When the pension fund raid happened, for example, we raised the matter during Leaders' Questions and asked parliamentary questions to try to get details of the advice the Minister for Finance had received from the Minister for Social Protection and generally.

It would have taken very little time to produce that answer. If there was true transparency and a genuine desire to give us information, it could have been given. However, months had to go by before we found out the truth, namely, the advice from the Minister for Social Protection was negative in regard to that pension raid, which netted €500 million for the Government and which was a penalty on workers and their pensions, to which they had contributed over the years.

The reason the Taoiseach and the Minister did not give the information is that they did not want the public to find out at that particular time. That is the point. It is the same with the primary care centres. After more information had come out via The Irish Timesunder freedom of information, I asked the Tánaiste on Leaders' Questions whether he could agree, at that stage, to publish all documentation in regard to the primary care centres. Of course, I got the same kind of equivocal, almost disingenuous, response along the lines of "I have no problem with that", but it never got out and no one ever published anything in regard to it. Again, it took months before the real truth came out about how the Minister, Deputy Reilly, almost an hour before the Cabinet met, slipped in Swords and Balbriggan.

It is a deliberate ploy. The Government is not being forthcoming and is not being transparent at all. This week, it was Reuters that told us there was some problem with the promissory note discussions with the European Central Bank and that the ECB had rejected a Government proposition. We have been asking in the House for 18 months what is the specific Government proposal that is being put and we have been trying to find out generally what is going on but we do not get answers. Were it not for Reuters, I do not believe we would have had the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, telling us on "The Week in Politics" about what happened last week in regard to the proposition the Government put to the ECB which the ECB did not accept. We found out via Reuters exactly what was going on.

The point I am making is that, while the extension of freedom of information legislation and the inclusion of new bodies is welcome, the culture needs to change. This is particularly the case in terms of the Government and Ministers providing a maximum amount of information to Members of the House, not the bare minimum and not by kicking it into freedom of information and hoping that, by the time it eventually comes out, the heat will have gone out of the situation and they can carry on with the next issue. The real focus and emphasis should be on reducing the need for Members to have to use freedom of information to get basic information about policy decisions.

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