Seanad debates

Thursday, 20 March 2003

Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2003: Report and Final Stages.

 

Section 2 of the 1997 Act contains a definition of personal information, and the Bill in no way alters this very comprehensive definition. It provides that personal information means information about an identifiable individual that, in the ordinary course of events, would only be known to the individual or family and friends of the individual; or information that is held by a public body on the understanding that it would be treated as confidential. Without prejudice to the generality of these two conditions, the definition then goes on to list comprehensive categories of information that are to be considered personal information. These include information relating to the educational history of the individual. By replacing "relate to" with "contain", a decision maker would examine this definition of personal information and satisfy himself or herself that a record meets the definition, rather than having to decide whether a record relates to personal information. The latter exercise entails extremely difficult, if not impossible, mental gymnastics. The phrase "relate to" is considered too vague a formulation when dealing with decisions relating to personal information on individuals.

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