Among Departments and Ministers, for example, the very essence of democratic government is that one is entitled to elaborate on and develop one's case in privacy, because one is leading to a Cabinet discussion and decision which will take place in private. I make no apologies for the protections which were introduced regarding the deliberative process. They were necessary. I have already said in public that the stance taken by the former Ombudsman in this matter was unduly aggressive in trying to tear down that kind of privacy, so much so that where we had a clearly established routine whereby political parties could ask the Department of Finance to cost their political proposals on budgetary matters with a view to improving the degree of responsibility that attaches to the democratic process, and whereby people could present a tax strategy which they wanted assessed in the context of an election, that was to be done in private. Could anything be more sensible or more high-minded than that public servants would conduct that service in private even for Opposition Deputies? Could anything be more wrong-minded than to imagine that the Freedom of Information Act required or could even create a situation where one party could then apply to find out what another party had been up to in terms of costing proposals? Could anything have been more wrong-minded or muddled than to think the public interest would be served by this? Nevertheless that much-decried Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill had to protect this aspect of privacy from aggressive implementation of the Freedom of Information Act.