Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for his response. He will be aware that the Government is a member of the Open Government Partnership, which is another initiative that I was privileged to propose in government. The programme for Government commits to transparent oversight building on the freedom of information reforms which the Taoiseach kindly acknowledged were proposed by me in government.

There are significant concerns around the experience of FOI requests and the delay in the Taoiseach's Department in processing them. The Taoiseach has already set out the number of FOI applications made. How many appeals were made to the Information Commissioner last year and the previous year and, if the Taoiseach has the information to hand, what was the outcome of those appeals? I am sure the Taoiseach has seen the articles in The Sunday Business Postabout the delays in releasing documents. It took six months, two appeals and an independent adjudicator before the documents referenced last week were released. Most of us would readily acknowledge that this information should be in the public domain and readily accessible by any citizen. It is very difficult to understand why it would take so long for this information to be released. The Taoiseach will probably respond to the effect that these are matters for the information officer in his Department but it might be worthwhile reviewing procedure in this regard to ensure that the general attitude in terms of freedom of information requests is, as I believe it should be, that information should be made available.

I had hoped the Government would be working towards a situation where the Freedom of Information Act would be unnecessary because the default position would be that all data in a Department would be accessible in a readable form. I am interested in hearing the Taoiseach's views on these matters.

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