Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply. I take his point on the need to split requests into parcels to ensure the work involved for each parcel does not exceed five hours. It is odd that in the case of a person whose request involves seven hours' work one would provide five hours of work free of charge and impose a fee of €40 for the remaining two hours. Would the requester not be asked to split the request to ensure the work involved in each part did not exceed five hours? The Minister indicated that discussions took place with the United Kingdom on this issue. While I do not agree with charging any fees, if they are to apply, the sixth hour should be €20 and so forth.

On the charge of €21 per hour, as per the report on the issue, the purpose of the fees regime is to strike a balance between providing reasonable access to public information and avoiding vexatious or lazy requests. I refer, for example, to a request for information that involves a civil servant clocking up 40 hours of work when the information was already available in the public domain. A request requiring 20 hours' work would incur a charge of €420. For many citizens, this does not strike a balance but indicates to them that they are not wealthy enough to submit their request. The counter-argument is that a person with such a request should break it up into four parcels of five hours' work as it would then be free of charge. Will the Minister confirm that a citizen who broke down a 20 hour request into four equal parcels would not incur a fee? If that were the case, it would go some way towards addressing the issue. Is it the Minister's view that a 20 hour request nominally costing €420 would be free if it were split into four bundles of five hours' work?

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