Results 3,701-3,720 of 34,778 for speaker:Seán Fleming
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: A review of section 32 is on our agenda, but it has been on it a long time.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: You are ready to come in to assist the committee. Is that correct? Are you available whenever necessary?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: Ms O'Reilly said in her letter this is a timely time to conduct a review, so that any amendments identified can be reflected in the new Bill. Therefore, Chairman, it is essential we should complete the review of these exemptions before the Bill is published. At our request, the commissioner has conducted a review of all of these exemptions. We have missed the deadline for our review, but we...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: I remember it took days to do this the last time it came up. Is it possible for it to be done swiftly? It is a big operation.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: We called some of them here.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: Therefore, it would be helpful to the process if this job was done before the legislation is published. However, that is not part of today's business. That is fine and we will study the detail of the issue separately. It is fine for the Oireachtas to pass legislation but we need to ensure the resources are there to provide for the operation of the legislation. An article in The Sunday...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: The Ombudsman cannot be happy with that.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: The obvious comment to make on that is that if the office is having difficulty meeting its legal requirements because of the lack of staffing and financial resources currently, extending FOI to a lot of other bodies is a pointless exercise unless the resources are supplied to enable the existing legislation, not to mind the new legislation, work. There is no point in us passing legislation...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: We understand that like An Bord Pleanála, Ms O'Reilly's office only gets the appeals.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: To return to the public bodies that make decisions, there must be hundreds of people making decisions. Let us take for example the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. I am sure there are umpteen officers in its different buildings, offices and sections dealing with FOI requests. Has Ms O'Reilly's office any mechanism for establishing the level of consistency there is within the...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: Ms O'Reilly referred to the inevitable legal challenges. How much of the Information Commissioner's budget is expended on legal costs? I know the office is stretched and may be put in a difficult position if it needs to challenge a legal case put by a public body and which may at a minimum be heard in the High Court. Those financial resources could be used instead for clearing the backlog...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: I refer to Ms O'Reilly's letter in which she stated she was pleased with the restoration of the FOI Act to its state before the 2003 amendments. What was the fees structure at that time? I think no fees were payable.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: The Minister's proposal includes a fee structure. He is not proposing to restore it to the pre-2003 situation. The most basic element of it is the issue of fees. He may be thinking about reducing the fees. What was the fees structure initially?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: For search and retrieval.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: It is still nil.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: Prior to the 2003 Act there was no fee for any of that.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: This legislation is not proposing to go back to the no-fees system.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: -----but Ms O'Reilly seems happy that there is a commitment to a restoration to the pre-2003 situation. This legislation is not proposing to abolish all the fees.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: Is that a full endorsement from Ms O'Reilly?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2012: Discussion (6 Feb 2013)
Seán Fleming: I have a question on the topic of search and retrieval fees, which I have raised on previous occasions. Last July I published a freedom of information (amendment) Bill which proposed a cap on search and retrieval fees. I submitted parliamentary questions last year requesting the average and the maximum level of search and retrieval fees in each Department. I give the Department of Social...