Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. It is rare for the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, not to attend for the entire debate on his own legislation, as Senator Byrne acknowledged earlier. Indeed, Senator Byrne also acknowledged that the Minister has brought much legislation through this House.

I believe that the Minister would welcome robust debate. There are those who were critical of him when he reviewed the legislation and the costs involved. They argued that he had to be forced to do this and that this was a weakness on his part. Actually, it is not a weakness in my opinion when a Minister takes on board observations, makes changes and accepts amendments. That is the democratic process and that is how legislation ought to be progressed. That is the strength of both of these Houses. Although the Minister is not here right now, I think it is safe to say that he will welcome robust debate and the thoughts that others, including Senator Quinn, have offered.

Regarding Senator Quinn's observation on Google, I attended a debate on that very matter hosted by Google recently. I was one of the speakers in a discussion on the right to be forgotten as part of the Hay Festival in Kells this summer. One of the issues that emerged from the conversation was that the final decision on who gets to be "forgotten" will be taken by Google's lawyers. That begins to look like the privatisation of information because the information is held by Google and if Senator Quinn or Senator O'Keeffe makes an application to be forgotten, the assessors of that application will be Google lawyers. That is a very interesting departure or change. In some ways it was inevitable that when an organisation like Google attained such dominance in the information market it would find itself having to make decisions of this kind.

I welcome this Bill which represents a strengthening of the existing legislation and a return to the spirit of the 1998 legislation. One of my prouder moments was receiving an award from the Campaign for the Freedom of Information in the UK for my own work from the then Minister of State, former Deputy Eithne Fitzgerald, who was the guest of honour that day. I have long believed in the importance of freedom of information.

This Bill is very important and many of the new thoughts that have been brought to it are strong and good. That said, there is room for further debate, particularly about record keeping. Not only are there are questions to be asked about the way in which records are held, but also about the way records are created. The more one opens up the idea of freedom of information, the less information is recorded. Therefore, one ends up in a situation where, having opened the door to it, people become quite clever in finding ways to record less. In that way, what we seek to achieve we do not actually achieve. This is partly due to the fact that we are all human and will find ways to defeat the system.

Senator Quinn made reference to progress made in America in the context of freedom of information and, indeed, the freedom of information regime in America is pretty good. However, it is worth noting that five years after President Obama directed agencies to invoke the "deliberative process exception" less frequently in order to withhold materials that describe decision making behind the scenes, withholding went up to a record of 81,752 refusals. Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee said: "It becomes too much of a temptation. If you screw up in government, just mark it top secret." Further analysis showed that the US Government more than ever before censored materials that it turned over or fully denied access to them. This is in a country where freedom of information was always cherished. Indeed, the US is always cited as the country that understands freedom of information best.

Let us not lull ourselves into some false sense of security that by legislating in a much wider fashion we are changing the way in which information is put into the public domain. We are not doing that. We are making small progress. It is good progress and I welcome it but it is not a panacea or the answer to everything. There will always be ways and means for Governments, Departments and people to keep secrets. We are very good at that, as human beings. Indeed, in this country we have a long record of networks of people keeping secrets, not just individuals. In the context of the work I did on child abuse and the Catholic Church, it was very clear that there was a network that supported the secrecy surrounding that. Despite the fact that we are a small country and we often talk colloquially about how everybody knows everybody, that did not stop us keeping really robust secrets which is quite a scary matter. It is always going to be difficult to legislate for freedom of information and to find means to make information readily available. In that sense, I welcome the fact that the Minister has worked very hard during his time in Government to find all sorts of means to open up Government. We have been in this House discussing many different Bills with him relating to defamation, whistleblowers and so on.

It is also interesting to note the situation in other countries with freedom of information legislation, like Pakistan, for example.

It has a record of shooting people who do not agree with it and look for information. It is on the list of countries which have freedom of information. I am not suggesting for a moment it would ever happen here or that legislation would encourage it, but it can be difficult to legislate and have a framework which is robust enough to withstand the ways and means by which people will seek to protect information. Knowledge is power, after all, and keeping knowledge gives one greater power, as we all know.

In conclusion, I would like to highlight the fact the Bill extends to all public bodies. That has been the subject of much discussion and now it includes the Central Bank, the NTMA, NAMA, An Garda Síochána and so on. The inclusion of the refugee agencies, in particular, is a good addition. We will see a change in the way journalists do their work in regard to the use of FOI. Senator Norris might have particular views regarding this-----