Dáil debates

Thursday, 3 October 2013

Freedom of Information Bill 2013: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

12:30 pm

Photo of Catherine MurphyCatherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Has the Minister of State seen the site? It is an insult and he should not defend it. We could do better than that. I cannot stress strongly enough that we need to amend the legislation to deal with the issue of personal records.

There is no definition of genealogy in the Bill, and that is a problem. That definition needs to go in. Section 37 protects personal information from third-party access and that is my point. I do not believe the Minister wants to inadvertently cut off this great opportunity. As someone who has done such research, I know the places where I have dug out records and found a connection to a place to which I did not know I had a connection. I go back over and over again. That is what people do and we want to encourage that. Not only does it produce a fund for this kind of research, but it produces returns to the local economies, for example history books written from an area. It is important in terms of building on our heritage.

A piece of European legislation, 10227/13 ADD 1, poses a risk to that aspect of research. We are different in that we have a very big diaspora relative to the size of our population. It seems to position such records in the area of darter protection. We must voice some concerns at European level about that. There must be a second definition that will overcome that.

The definition of electronic and paper records is another area of concern. That requires clarification in the language used in section 17. The wording of subsection (4) is very vague and we must address this on Committee Stage, when I will propose some amendments. Paragraph (b) states that it is considered reasonable grounds to refuse information if it would lead to considerable and onerous work in preparing that information, enormous records which have not been collated, for example. It seems to define it as though everything is in paper records, and that seems to be the difficulty. However, much information is held in digital format, and that is the case more and more. We should future-proof this legislation to take account of that.

Under section 17(4)(b) the FOI body shall take steps that “would be considered reasonable if the records were held in paper format”. The Minister does not mean a body may refuse a request to release electronically stored information in cases where if the information were theoretically in paper format it would result in an onerous amount of work. A solicitor, Mr. Simon McGarr, contacted me and raised this as an area of concern. Mr. McGarr contacted the Information Commissioner, who said he considered the wording very badly drafted. That needs to be examined given that it will cause problems into the future.

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