Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 29:

In page 16, to delete line 41, and in page 17, to delete lines 1 to 14.

I am sorry, I was mixing up my amendments. Amendment No. 29 is very similar to No. 27. No. 27 says a Minister may put a body on the exempt list and amendment No. 29 is about the Minister putting part of a public body on the exempt list. As with amendment No. 27, it is a serious thing to do, to say to a part of a public sector body that it is completely free of freedom of information. It seemed to me that because it is a serious matter, a Dáil vote would provide an extra safety guard against a future Minister making decisions. My understanding of the legislation is that such decisions are not just instigated by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, for example, could go to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and ask that a certain part of CIE would be exempt. We spoke earlier about school transport. A future Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform could agree to the request. We could begin to see, through decisions that do not have any Dáil oversight, the gradual erosion of freedom of information as an increasing number of bodies are potentially put outside it. A reasonable safety valve to introduce would be to ratify such decisions by Dáil vote.

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