Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased we are having this short debate on these U-turns in respect of freedom of information being proposed by the Minister. The Government's original plan was to have it taken here without debate, but we said there had to be a proper debate and have succeeded in getting five minutes for each of the Opposition speakers, which is welcome and is better than where we were. I acknowledge we had an extensive debate yesterday at the committee meeting. The Minister came into office and trumpeted himself as the saviour of freedom of information. He said he was going to restore it and amend the various butchering procedures that had happened on previous occasions. Within a few short months, and less than six months after the legislation came into effect, he is rethinking his policies and rowing back on a number of measures. If these measures had not gone through, we would not have this rowing back of freedom of information.

The Minister is excluding the performance of the new Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland and aspects of the National Treasury Management Agency's work. He is also excluding the Shannon Group in its entirety. I am looking at the Minister's script from yesterday, which states that "given the very important responsibilities assigned by Government to the Shannon Group in terms of regional development in the mid-west region, it is obviously critical to ensure that the organisation is not put at a commercial disadvantage". I can understand that in respect of Shannon Airport and so on, but if it is a regional development agency, like a large version of Leader companies or other development companies like the IDA or Enterprise Ireland, which come within this legislation, the regional development aspect should not be excluded.

The Minister said the Irish Red Cross was inadvertently included and I understand there are many difficulties at senior level in that organisation. It is a little dysfunctional on the managerial level at the moment and probably needs a little extra time. There is provision in the legislation to extend the date by which organisations come under freedom of information legislation to later in the year, namely, to next October. He is taking that particular option for EirGrid and perhaps some other bodies as well. I proposed yesterday that this might have been a better measure for the Red Cross. Restrictions also apply to the Coimisinéir Teanga. That is fine in terms of the investigations the office carries out.

Some of the critical issues are the change in the official date by which information can be obtained when the new regime comes in. It is scheduled to come into effect for many organisations on 14 April, which is just a few days away, and the Minister is making changes to this at the 11th hour. The reason he gave in the briefing note for this change in the effective date was that the Private Residential Tenancies Board is in the process of taking on significant additional responsibilities in taking security deposits of approximately €1,000 per tenancy from 300,000 tenants and is dealing with new approved housing bodies, which will comprise 28,000 households. As I said yesterday, I understand that has not yet commenced, so I do not see how the timing of the Freedom of Information Act impacts on that issue. The Minister said it was the date from which records were computerised, but people are entitled to access non-computerised or computerised documentation and there should not be a different date depending on whether it is computerised.

I have a difficulty with changing the effective date for information from the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugees Application Tribunal. In the briefing note, the Minister said he only considered making these changes having had requests from the line Ministers and Departments. He said he only approved a few, but he did not indicate how many he refused. It might have helped him to tell us all the ones he refused and to show us how he tried to keep freedom of information-----

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