Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this announcement by the Minister. There is a sense of tremendous outrage. People feel that when the Government was deciding on the road it was going to go down, it adopted the wrong model by choosing Bord Gáis as the lead organisation in this regard. It is a question of a certain kind of semi-State culture. In fairly recent times we saw Pádraig McManus and other executives in the semi-State sector being paid more than €600,000 per annum. Will the freedom of information measure announced by the Minister be retrospective? Will Deputies be able to delve into spending already taking place such as the €86 million being spent on consultants and the €15.7 million being spent through the local authorities, as we heard last night? Will we know whether the local property tax has been utilised to fund this vast expenditure on the part of Irish Water? Will this measure be retrospective? Will the applicability of the freedom of information regime to this organisation be confined to a limited period? Some reports have suggested it will not extend beyond 2017. Will we be refused access to information on the affairs of Irish Water after that date on the basis of commercial sensitivity, etc.?

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