Misunderstanding of FOI appears widespread within State apparatus - Pringle

Donegal TD, Thomas Pringle, said proposed reform of the Freedom of Information Act highlights the failures of the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs to understand or comply with FOI laws.

Addressing the Dáil last night (Wednesday), Deputy Pringle (Independent) said: “To me it shows there is a widespread misunderstanding of FOI and indeed GDPR legislation within the apparatus of the State.”

Earlier, Deputy Pringle had voted against the motion of confidence in Minister Simon Coveney. He said Government parties and others had defended “the indefensible actions of the Fine Gael minister”.

Deputy Pringle said: “Sadly, it accurately reflects on how these three parties stand on issues of openness, accountability and most importantly responsibility.”

Deputy Pringle was speaking in favour of a Sinn Féin motion that would have strengthened the Freedom of Information Act. The Government instead supported a review of the Act.

The deputy said: “There appears to be an attitude across public bodies in general that FOI requests are unnecessary prying by the public and to resist genuine compliance at all costs. They seem to interpret GDPR as a tool primarily to facilitate the suppression of information. Somehow the idea of openness and transparency is lost.”

He said: “But when leadership is sorely lacking at the highest levels of administration, what hope do we have?”

Deputy Pringle said opposition deputies “are often forced to fall back on FOIs when we receive parliamentary question replies that I would describe as substandard. I’m sure that many of my opposition colleagues would agree that we spend a lot of time FOI-ing information that should be openly available to us to properly scrutinize the actions of Government”.

He said Minister Michael McGrath’s amendment to the Sinn Féin motion didn’t tell the full story of FOI applications.

Deputy Pringle said: “How many of us have had to appeal and then appeal again to the Information Commissioner? How many of us have been told that phone message records do not exist? Can we believe that any of these FOIs were dealt with properly? It certainly seems over the last couple of weeks that we can’t.”

The deputy said he believed everything that could be secured through an FOI application should be available as a right.

Deputy Pringle said: “I believe we should be pursuing a policy of open government: All records that relate to deliberations and decisions concerning state grant schemes, services and the administration of public monies should be, as a matter of course, openly and easily accessible to the public.”