Charlie McCreevy (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I will not be accepting this amendment. I am not convinced there are grounds for restricting the period of time, to 12, 24 or some other period, for which a public body can invoke the provision whereby failure to pay a fee properly charged under freedom of information can constitute grounds for the refusal of a request. This would serve unduly to restrict a public body in taking unreasonable behaviour into account. The payment of fees is a requirement under the Freedom of Information Act and it is only correct that a failure or previous failure to pay a fee should constitute grounds for the refusal of a request, regardless of when that failure occurred.

The amendment concerns section 10 of the principal Act which contains a "may refuse" rather than a "shall refuse" exemption. The head of a public body will continue to be able to exercise discretion before deciding to refuse a request because a previous fee owed to the body had not been paid by the requester.