Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The commitment I brought to the Government last year is to join the Open Government Partnership, which is a cutting edge set of measures to have transparency in everything we do. Part of what I want to do in that is to have what I describe as "open data". I hope that FOI will become obsolete over time, because open data means that we should have all information in the public domain as a matter of course. We have to work towards that and that is the objective I have set for the Government. We are drawing up a national plan on the Open Government Partnership, and I am pleased to say our efforts to date are such that we are now going to host the European Open Government Partnership annual meeting, which will take place in May. The cutting edge countries in respect of open government, FOI and so on will all be here. At the last meeting in London, I was asked to give the presentation because the legislation we have crafted on whistleblowers is regarded as world class. All these things are being addressed and I thank Deputies for their support.

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