Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this legislation. In its short time in office the Rainbow Government of 1994 to 1997, led by a fellow Meath man, John Bruton, achieved great strides in opening up and modernising the State. The Freedom of Information Act 1997 was an important part of that programme. In introducing the Bill to the Dáil, the then Minister of State, Eithne Fitzgerald, stated:

Information is power and access to information is fundamental to the reform of our democratic institutions to create genuine openness and to empower the ordinary citizen.

This achievement, which was motivated by the greater public interest and was primarily for the benefit of the people but also of voluntary organisations, academics and the media, suffered a serious setback with the introduction of the 2003 Act. It is important to reflect on the reasons that the great strides we had made should have been pushed back. The 2002 general election was fought against the backdrop of an Irish and global economy still trying to process the consequences of the attack on the Twin Towers and the earlier dotcom crash. Ireland was and still is a small open economy positioning itself to take advantage of favourable head winds. At that time interest rates began to tumble in an effort to keep the global economy afloat, a dangerous prospect for a country like Ireland where home ownership is paramount owing to our experiences in the land war.

These realities did not sit well with the electoral plans of the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and were ignored in the lead-up to the 2002 general election. Public spending not only increased dramatically in line with the election cycle, it was also front-loaded into the first five months of 2002. This meant that cuts in the second half of the year were inevitable and, by the standards of that time, traumatic. This was clear to be seen but forcefully denied by members of the Fianna Fáil-led Government until such time as freedom of information requests under the 1997 Act proved otherwise later in 2002. Those revelations angered the public, which rightly felt that it had been conned. Having been elected to the Dáil for the first time in 2002, I have vivid memories of these events. In fact, the demise of the freedoms given in the 1997 Act by its amendment in 2003 was one of the main political controversies in my first year in this House.

I am proud to be part of a Fine Gael-Labour Party Government that is fulfilling its general election and programme for Government commitments to political reform by putting a new freedom of information Bill before the House. It is a Bill which rightly and justly restores the pre-2003 position. By its openness and transparency, it puts to bed the more idiotic Fianna Fáil and media commentary around the forthcoming referendum on the abolition of the Seanad which seeks to suggest that this Republic is slipping into a dictatorship. That is far from the reality. This Government is not afraid to operate in a transparent way. We are not hiding anything from the people. We do not operate from one election to the other, unlike previous Governments which brought us to where we are today following their actions in the 2002 and 2007 ballots. We are restoring the Republic, stone upon stone, as Michael Collins might have said, after 14 years of Fianna Fáil misrule which saw a squandering of resources and opportunities and of people's hopes and their potential. That party in government failed during the boom years to prepare this country, with its small open economy, in such a way that might have made it capable of handling the effects of international crises. Indeed, I often wonder whether things would have got quite so out of control between 2000 and 2008 if there had been access for Opposition politicians and journalists to a more open freedom of information regime.

This Bill goes further than a mere restoration of the pre-2003 position. I welcome, in particular, the extension of its remit to other public bodies and bodies in receipt of significant public moneys. The inclusion of non-security sensitive elements of the administrative functions of the Garda Síochána is especially welcome. There have nevertheless been claims that the legislation does not go far enough. The reality is that we have advanced significantly from the position of the past ten years and are now on a totally new level of accountability compared with the pre-1997 position. We must, at the same time, be hard nosed and realistic in terms of protecting commercially sensitive information.

I note and welcome the input into the Bill of the many interested parties who attended the public hearings of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform in the first quarter of this year. It was very encouraging to hear Emily O'Reilly's comments that the Bill represents a positive step towards greater transparency. The people of this country can be very proud of Ms O'Reilly as she assumes her new role as European Ombudsman.

I also welcome the move to reduce some of the fees associated with freedom of information requests and to review the search and retrieval costs. Some people have expressed the view that the remaining fees are excessive, but we must bear in mind that the fulfilment of any freedom of information request will carry some cost. The new charges are certainly more realistic and fair compared with what went before. The increase in fees in 2003 was responsible for a marked tailing off in the general interest in and availing of the freedom of information regime for many years. In more recent times the economic crisis and the desire to gain an understanding of how it could have happened has helped to spark a new interest.

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