David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister talks all the time about reversing the flow. I do not accept that. If so, what about it? The goldfish are not going to drop dead because he reversed the flow. Our cry should be to go with the flow. One of the reasons I tabled this amendment is the dearth of notes. Thanks to the invasive nature of what can be found under the Freedom of Information Act, notes of what happens at government meeting are not kept. It is all done orally. We do not know what is going on. There is a tissue of pretence about freedom of information and all the rest, a lot of which leads to prurient quarrying by media, which is offensive and irritating. The media often misinterpret the facts when they get them, and sometimes they deliberately misinterpret them. This amendment is intended to counter the absence of information on the substance of discussions at meeting. We should know the substance. It is not enough to know that lobbying took place; we need to know what went on. If one believes in freedom of information, one really needs freedom to know what went on. What is the point in knowing that a meeting happened? So what? The substance of what went on is what we need to know. We need a note of that. I very firmly believe this and I ask the Minister to review this amendment. Let me point out that the Minister has not accepted any amendments except his own, although he gave a number of undertakings that he would look at things again. I will not call a vote if I get an undertaking from the Minister that he will look at this again.

I think Irish Water has gone to the Minister's head - he is talking about the flow here and the flow there and the flow back. That is all nonsense. Let us know what inducements were offered to Government. The Galway tent does not have to be in Galway; it can be in Government Buildings too. It can be a reverse flow, with the industry bullying the Government.