Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the Members who contributed to the debate on this legislation. I also reiterate my thanks to Deputies Mairéad Farrell and Clarke for bringing forward the Bill. I have already set out in some detail my views on the legislation as currently drafted, which highlighted technical and policy issues regarding further consideration. I have, however, heard and noted the comments made by the Deputies and all the other Members who have contributed.

I will avail of this opportunity to update the House on the progress of the ongoing review of the Freedom of Information Act 2014. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, has made clear, and I fully agree with him, that the review should take the form of an open and collaborative process. To this end, shortly after the Government approved the review, the Department published a roadmap document setting out the process and anticipated timelines for the review. This document is available on the Department’s website and social media channels.

An initial public consultation then followed on the scope of the review. This was intended as a way for the Department to look beyond the bare statistics and to seek to understand, in general terms, the kinds of issues of concern to stakeholders across all sectors. We had almost 1,200 responses from public bodies, workers across the Civil Service and public sector, civil society, journalists, academics and other representatives who contributed a wealth of experience and expertise to the process. These responses are still being analysed by the Department, and they will form the basis of a more detailed consultation document to be published in the spring, which will seek views on identified themes and issues.

Alongside that endeavour, the Department will shortly roll out a customer satisfaction survey. It will aim to gain a much deeper understanding of how the FOI system is operating in practice and how it is perceived by those at the coalface, including information requesters and the staff of public bodies who fulfil the requests. Other work has been ongoing in the background. For example, the Department has begun to assess developments in other countries to see what lessons can be learned from those experiences. The Department will continue to work closely with the OIC in progressing this project, but it will also liaise closely with other key sectoral stakeholders.

One of the challenges in undertaking the review is doing justice to the breadth of the FOI system. The Department will continue to proactively seek views from individuals and advocacy groups who may be able to provide insights regarding the use of FOI legislation in particular contexts. Other elements of the review process will include interviews, focus groups, case studies and a project to estimate the resourcing and cost implications of the FOI system. As will be apparent, this is an ambitious and thorough review process. I reiterate, just in case, that there is no intention to reintroduce fees. The review process aims to build a strong, evidential foundation to further develop and improve approaches to public sector transparency, as well as to seek the broadest possible range of views and policy options.

The review looks at structural issues that may plot a broader course for developing public sector transparency measures in the medium to longer term, as well as more incremental changes which will aim to improve practices and outcomes in the short term in the current system. The review is still at a relatively early stage, and its recommendations will be based on the evidence as it emerges. While I cannot pre-empt the outcome, I reiterate my earlier stated view, which is one the Minister agrees with and has previously stated in this House as well, that there has been a vast expansion of FOI usage since 2014. There may, however, be a point of diminishing returns in the context of the growth of the number of requests. More requests may mean that individuals are having to jump through unnecessary bureaucratic hoops to access information which should be provided in a much more direct and straightforward way. The target, therefore, is not necessarily to have the maximum number of requests. That may not be the utopia that we seek.

More requests may also mean that bodies are not publishing information that should be generally available without the need to make FOI requests. Equally, there is the ongoing need to balance access with their important rights and interests in respect of information held by public bodies, such as privacy or commercial sensitivity. While FOI legislation may have opened the doors and the filing cabinets of State bodies and played a key role in entrenching transparency as a core principle of public administration, there is an open question as to whether alternative or supplemental approaches are required to build on that success.

Depending on one's point of view, the progenitor of the Irish FOI approach may be taken to be the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act 1766, which is usually seen as the first FOI law. More directly, probably, it may stem from the US Freedom of Information Act 1967. In either case, as I have previously noted, the FOI requests model as we know it is based on the assumption of paper-based administration.

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