Does the Government not appreciate the enormous sea change that the passage of the original legislation only six years ago represented? Does it not realise the nature of the message it is now sending out to the people of Ireland by seeking to tamper with this regime in what I would call a hasty, ill-considered and self-serving way? When the Bill was passed in 1997, we all hoped it was merely a first step on the road to openness and transparency in government. We pointed to the example of the Scandinavian countries where every document of Government was automatically considered to be public property and available to everybody almost immediately. We reminded ourselves that they seemed to be able to do their business very well on that basis. We pointed to the benefits of such an approach in bringing people closer to the whole political process.