Seanad debates

Tuesday, 4 March 2003

Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2003: Second Stage (Resumed).

 

Section 4 amends section 6 of the Act, which deals with the right of access to records. It proposes to substitute the word "contain" for the words "relate to". This further weakens the position of the individual or the professional journalist because they will be much more restricted in terms of their ability to access their personal files. They will only be allowed access files subject to 11 exemptions, as opposed to the nine provided for under the Act. Excluded from this will be records about them but which do not contain personal information as defined in the Act. This further weakens the position of the person requesting information. The new categories cover personal records, commercially sensitive information and confidential information. The difficulty is that it is not clear what is meant by these categories. It leads to a further possibility for obfuscation.

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