Jillian van Turnhout (Independent)
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No. 2 is a motion regarding the Freedom of Information Act 2014 (Effective Date for Certain Bodies) Order 2015. No. 3 is a motion regarding the Freedom of Information Act 2014 (Exempted Public Bodies) Order 2015. The motions can be discussed together, by agreement. Is that agreed? Agreed. Members should note that only group spokespersons will be called.

Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I move:

That Seanad Éireann approves the following Order in draft:Freedom of Information Act 2014 (Effective Date for Certain Bodies) Order 2015,copies of which Order in draft were laid before Seanad Éireann on 10th March 2015.

Ivana Bacik (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin. I will speak in support of the motions as our spokesperson, Senator Susan O'Keeffe, is unable to be present because of the banking inquiry-----

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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It is very important work.

Ivana Bacik (Independent)
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It is and I am delighted to stand in for her.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to welcome the passage of the motions on the Freedom of Information Act and the revised regime the Minister steered through the Houses which came into force on 14 October last year. It involves radical, comprehensive and sweeping reform of the freedom of information provisions. In particular, the creation of the reverse presumption was hugely welcome. The presumption that had applied under the 1997 Act was that a public body had to be specifically included in the FOI regime, whereas in the new regime the Minister introduced under the 2014 Act it was stated a public body so defined would automatically be subject to FOI legislation unless specifically exempted. That is a hugely welcome and progressive change in favour of transparency and it is in that context that we are ooking at these orders. As the Minister said, in respect of the order concerning exempted bodies, in whole or in part, he received quite a number of applications, but he has given just two bodies a full exemption, as he explained in full at the Oireachtas joint committee yesterday.

In respect of the other order concerning a different effective date for certain bodies under FOI legislation, I received, as I am sure a number of other colleagues did, an e-mail from the Irish Refugee Council on the effective date for two bodies, namely, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. I understand the Irish Refugee Council has opposed the date provided for in the order covering these bodies. I cannot agree with it. It is important to state these bodies are being made subject to FOI legislation for the first time.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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Yes.

Ivana Bacik (Independent)
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That is hugely important. All of us who have criticised the refugee and asylum system for many years are very pleased to see these bodies being included for the first time. I accept the practical reason given by the Minister for saying the effective date is 14 October 2014 for the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, but it is also important to note, as the Minister told the committee yesterday, that where records were created before that date including personal information on a person seeking access to them, the effective date does not apply and the person concerned is entitled to access such records back to whatever date they were created. It is important to highlight this to reassure people that in a sense it is not a blanket date and is not a random. It is the date on which the legislation came into effect. I am entirely satisfied that, in the context of the sweeping and very positive reform of freedom of information legislation, the two orders are sensible and practical and I am happy to support them.

Jillian van Turnhout (Independent)
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It is group spokespersons-----

Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I wish to amend the Order of Business. I mentioned the contributions of group spokespersons, but to allow other Senators to contribute, I suggest they be given four minutes in which to contribute also.

Jillian van Turnhout (Independent)
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That is appreciated. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Leader for amending the Order of Business to allow me to contribute. I will be brief.

At a time when there is a need for greater transparency in public bodies, some have found it perplexing that for bodies such as the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal there will be an effective date for freedom of information requests, as mentioned, of 14 October 2014. The issues that it is claimed are driving this change are, first, the protection of sensitive personal information against third parties and, second, that if the records remain subject to release under FOI legislation, each record will be subject to review, giving rise to a substantial administrative burden. However, the substantial administrative burden referred to in favour of the passing of the motion might perhaps become obsolete, given that a cost will still be incurred, albeit from a later date. I do not believe the conepts of transparency and fairness should be punished because of a fear of incurring administrative costs. I know that ensuring accountability, transparency and adhering to human rights has a cost, but we should be willing to meet it.

Concerns have been raised that this could be seen as the latest move in a trend that has been developing. For example, prior to this, the Ombudsman and Information Commissioner was not allowed oversight of direct provision centres in spite of the all-party Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight endorsing the request.

Senator Ivana Bacik has mentioned an e-mail we all received this morning from the Irish Refugee Council urging us to oppose the motion on the grounds that no reasons had been given for proposing the date of 14 October 2014. It cannot see any reason records created before that date should not be subject to FOI requests. Will the Minister explain this because many Members do not sit on the committee that he appeared before yesterday and it would be interesting to hear the explanation in the House?

Gerard Craughwell (Independent)
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It is a pleasure to meet the Minister again.

On the issue of freedom of information, I am not seeking to have broadened the areas covered, although I am very happy to see information made available to the general public on any occasion and subject.However, there are some things that I regard as repugnant, namely, the spate of freedom of information requests that come into this House. There was an freedom of information request yesterday that concerned my secretary's name. My secretary is a lady who came to me after I was elected, looked for a job, went through a formal interview process and got that job. Her employment with me is private to her. If she chooses to make her name known, I welcome her doing so but it is outrageous that any journalist anywhere in the country would start making freedom of information requests for the names of people who work in my office. If they want to know whether I hired my wife, daughter, son, granny or anyone else, they can just ask me. They can pick up the phone and ask me. Some clown sought information about my salary under freedom of information. I am sorry if I have referred to them as a clown but my salary is on the web. If they want to see what I earn, they should look on the web. If they want to see what my expenses are, they should look on the web. Let us stop wasting the time of public servants answering what I regard as vexatious freedom of information requests.

When the freedom of information tool was introduced, it was commendable. It opened up Government and made it available to the people. Departments and decisions made by Ministers have been made available to the people. Is it important to know whether I hired Mary Murphy, Julia Maguire or John O'Dwyer? Does it really matter? If I took a flight to Brussels on behalf of the State or for some work associated with it, is it really that important? People can make those types of requests under freedom of information if they wish. Where we are talking about individuals employed in this House who are not public representatives and have not put themselves before the public, there is an onus on the Data Protection Commissioner to protect their identities if they want to do that. If someone wants to know whether I have employed relations, they should ask me straight out. I will be writing to the Data Protection Commissioner about this issue. I regard it as a gross intrusion into my secretary's life. If I was to write to Bank of Ireland, IBM or Microsoft and ask for a list of the secretaries there and the managers who employed them, would I get that information? Would I have any reason to get that information? Is it any of my business?

Will the Minister, as the Minister with responsibility for this, support me on this issue? If someone wants to know about relatives working for Members of the Oireachtas, they should ask straight out. Incidentally, I am not condemning that either. I am not saying it is wrong where a Member of the Oireachtas may have an unemployed son or daughter who would be capable of taking on the work. Perhaps the media will have a go at me for this but I suppose it is time.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I thank Members of the House for their contributions and will deal with the points raised. It has been my ambition for many years to reform totally the freedom of information regime and I was very pleased to begin the task as part of a suite of measures we have discussed at length in this House dealing with whistleblowing and the regulation of lobbying. I was looking at the regulation of lobbying website that will be piloted in the next few months and that will become live on 1 September 2015. It will change the way all of us are lobbied. I do not think people are quite prepared for the changes that will come in. That is part of the new regime that it is right for us to bed down.

The most important part of the process we are undergoing here is that an intrinsic part of the new freedom of information regime is that everyone is in unless both Houses put them out. This is why I must explain if there are any exclusions from any public body. It is a great help to me to resist calls from so many bodies which would like to be excluded either whole or in part. I say to them that unless there is an absolutely compelling reason, they are in.

There are two things before the House today, one of which is the effective date. The effective date is the back date to which freedom of information will apply. The effective date in the Act is arbitrary enough. We had to pick a date and we chose 2008. Why? We did so because it happened to be the tenth anniversary of the year the first Act, which was sponsored by the former Minister of State, Eithne Fitzgerald, came in. We said that ten years on from that is the effective date. This will apply to the 500 or more bodies that will now be encompassed by freedom of information. A number of bodies made submissions to me about practical issues relating to that level of backdating. The only ones that could convince me beyond doubt are before the House today.

The Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal are coming in for the first time. The Refugee Applications Commissioner has four million paper files so one can imagine the administrative burden if all those had to be open to third party freedom of information requests. My fear was that we would delay the processing of genuine applications and, for that reason, I decided that we would commence it from a date that is practical. As Senator Bacik rightly said, there is no limit regarding applications from refugees who wish to access their own files.

The other date change concerns the Private Residential Tenancies Board. Why did I pick 2012 as the operable date for that? It is because 2012 was the year it created electronic files. Before that, it dealt with paper files and had 1.2 million files per year, so that would grind to a halt if we did not make a practical decision relating to that. Therefore, the date of the creation of electronic files in 2012 is the operational date.

I hope that explains the situation to the House. I should mention the cri du coeurfrom Senator Craughwell. If I go to important meetings with a member of the European Commission or the Council of Ministers, I often hope I might get a freedom of information request about the contents of the discussion. I never do but I will get a freedom of information request about the cost of the flight and where I stayed. Perhaps that is the nature of things and perhaps we will mature beyond that some day. Apparently, there are one or two people who do nothing else but make freedom of information requests about expenses, and I think we will see their names cropping up with the freedom of information requests that are coming in. From my perspective, most Departments are putting everything on the web so people can simply look at the web.

Open and transparent administration is a requirement of regaining the trust of the people. We will mature in the way we deal with freedom of information requests. In parallel, we will look at the open Government partnership arrangements where we will have open data in order that an increasing number of data sets will be available as a default mechanism so there will be no need to ask specifically for them because they will be available for public scrutiny. I said that the retrospective date for all of the 500 or more bodies would be April 2008. This applies to new bodies. The effective date for all existing bodies goes back to 1998, which was the date of operation of the original Act. I thank Senators for their support.