Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In 2008, when the current Minister of State, Deputy White, was a Member of the Seanad, he said "the presumption in any democratic society...should be to make the information available". He argued that "it is not good enough for a Minister to point to the extraordinary cost or how onerous it is on us". The changes that are proposed in this legislation are contrary to the position of the UN Human Rights Committee and the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents. International experts are no more ambiguous. Article 19, which is a human rights organisation that focuses on freedom of information, has said it "strongly opposes the current Irish policy...as well as the pending bill before the Dail to expand fees". It believes it violates international law. According to a Canadian journalist and author, Cory Doctorow:

Irish politicians have taken extraordinary measures to protect the state from the people finding out what it's up to. This is alarming on its face, and would be bad news even if Ireland was a paragon of good governance, and not a nation in economic meltdown.

The Government's new Bill introduces a range of new charges and impediments. It retains the up-front fee of €15 for non-personal records. It provides for a retrieval cost of €21 an hour. It introduces multiple fees for multifaceted requests. It introduces multiple fees for single requests that have to go to more than one functional area. It retains a fee for internal appeal and a fee for appeal to the Information Commissioner. In short, the freedom of information legislation that is before the committee will make freedom of information more expensive. Why is the Government increasing freedom of information costs even though domestic and international experts are clear and unanimous on how bad that is? We have unparalleled information on how and why secrecy is bad in this State.

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