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

There is an element of agreement across the board on the relevance and necessity of FOI and the significant part it plays in us having a proper, accountable and transparent system, which has not always been the case. There have definitely been failings at State level. In fairness, I have heard the Minister make promises to increase transparency. That is making as much of government available as possible through earlier publication of records and such. All of that is sound and necessary, but Deputies Clark and Farrell have put forward legislation to improve upon SIPO.

We have no problem in engaging in relation to what the Minister of State has proposed and with difficulties there may be. The point of Committee Stage is that we take in the necessary stakeholders and experts and tease it out. We all know the advantages of SIPO. We know what it does from a point of view of investigative journalists. We still have the case of Dealgan House and the tragic deaths that occurred during the early period of this pandemic. The families concerned carried out significant investigation on their own and would not have been able to do so with FOIs. However, the fact is that at times they were hampered even in dealing with State agencies such as the HSE. Material was to be handed over, then could not be and later could be following the involvement of local politicians and others. There was also to be a Bill with certain provisions and then were was not.

These are the sort of issues we must consider. We must be completely open to looking at all possible solutions.

This is not about trying to catch out people or getting one piece of information without context so we can hammer someone. There must also be a wider discussion if we are talking about Government or State agencies, or even some of the other bodies that must be brought to a greater degree into the freedom of information system. We must have a conversation about what is involved. Will it include every single social media outlet and everybody who sends something on Messenger? Some of the messages may not always be best received, even by me. I generally try not to engage but I accept that one would need to be a saint not to have replied rather robustly to certain people at certain times.

We will have to do significant work on this. Again, there is a missing piece. To use the Dealgan example again, there was a difficulty because it was up to the families to carry out an investigation. I reiterate that there must be an inquiry and I will speak to the Government about that. There is a large amount of information there because of the tenacity of the families. A mechanism has been promised by the Government and I will follow up on that. Those families would have been in a worse position if they did not have the likes of that freedom of information process.

If we are all in agreement, there seems to be an interest from the Minister of State and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, in progressing this. Whatever the outworkings of this interaction, a plan should be put in place for a review so we can be serious about enacting recommendations afterwards. We all know there have been huge mistakes made over the years and wrongdoing that at times was incredibly difficult to uncover. To a degree, we would be better off with a system that is there to be seen. The regular people out there may sometimes have a jaundiced view of politics and how the State and certain companies operate. If we speak about people from NAMA or the Land Development Agency, it may be the case that people can only be satisfied when we can show everybody what can be shown in interactions and the legal operations that are being carried out. We can then have a wider conversation about what would necessarily fall under SIPO's ambit.

There is a large body of work to be done in this area. In fairness to the Deputies who put this Bill forward, it indicates intent from Sinn Féin in its desire to tackle this matter. I accept that the Government is engaging and trying to get us to an end point that is better, with a strengthened SIPO and a greater element of agencies, companies and organisations falling under the freedom of information process. Even with some bodies falling under the freedom of information process, there should be a greater element of that transparency and accountability. For the want of a better term, we must all put our heads together and ensure this happens. We do not want another scenario where the can is kicked down the road. We will work on the existing issues and we all want a better system for SIPO. We should do everything that needs to be done to get to that point.

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