Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for confirming that there is a review. That was announced in June. I welcome that. I am a little worried about the vagueness of the phrase “in the coming weeks”. Will the Minister be more specific on when the roadmap will be published and when we will have the final result with a view to amending the legislation, if necessary?

I listened last week to the Minister's speech on the Sinn Féin motion on FOI. I thank him for that speech because he included a lot of detail. I actually agree with him that we should be changing the approach entirely. It would be great if we did not need the FOI arrangement but we do. We went through the circular process of introducing it, which was revolutionary at the time, but it was not broad enough. Then we changed the system and introduced a fee, and then we removed that fee. I notice that 50% of all the requests were by individuals seeking personal information. This is an extraordinarily high rate. Why is that the case? I will keep to the time because I am very strict on it when in the Chair.

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