Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The Government is not required to go naked into some kind of communal sauna in order to be accountable to the people. We are entitled to our privacy. We are entitled to generate our proposals in private. We are entitled to come up with foolish ideas and then spike them. We are entitled to put trenchant views against each other's positions coming up to a Cabinet decision and if we want to remain in Government, we are then obliged to go out and defend the majority decision taken at a Cabinet meeting. We are entitled to do all of those things. It is only sensible to defend that Freedom of Information (Amendment) Act. It was a sensible correction of a pendulum that had swung too far. I do not blame the Opposition parties for making an alliance with the media to attack it.