Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcomed some of the things the Minister said. Obviously, we will keenly watch his roadmap regarding the process of review. As some of my colleagues said earlier, we are beyond the need for a review to tighten up and address the weaknesses within FOI. I accept that the whole system should be constantly reviewed. We are in a changing world, particularly regarding technological advances. I also welcome the Minister's stating that he wants to see fewer FOI requests on the basis of greater openness and publication of Government material. We need to get to that point, but until we get there, we need to ensure we have empowered the FOI system to the degree that it needs to be.

I was not quite sure where regular people might stand on the issue we debated earlier today because I accept that politicians sometimes operate within a political bubble. However, many people who interacted with me saw this as the continuation of cronyism and connectedness. They saw this as just more of the same and that nothing had really changed. Some of them were angered and some of them were absolutely case-hardened. A number of them stated to me that they had a feeling similar to the feeling we got on the doorsteps during the last general election campaign - that the only thing that will change this is a change of government.

The Minister now has an opportunity to deal with the specifics of FOI. We previously dealt with Deputy Mairéad Farrell's legislation on lobbying. Given the day that we have had here and given the last eight weeks we have had, we need movement on such legislation in order to stop that revolving door, and stop that connectedness or even the perception of it. It is vital that we do this as soon as possible. Many people have already said that we have issues with regular citizens, politicians and campaigning groups trying to seek the truth and trying to seek information from public bodies. We are aware that certain public bodies are not under the rules of FOI. We need to ensure all these gaps that exist are filled so that we can provide people with the light as opposed to the darkness where, as some of my colleagues have said, democracy goes to die. We need to ensure this does not happen.

What we are asking for is very simple. I welcome the Minister's saying that he will critically engage with the legislation from Deputies Clarke and Mairéad Farrell. We need to make those moves so that we have absolute openness and transparency.

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