Ministers’ FoI U-turn

Five Government ministers who had defended plans to ramp up Freedom of Information fee costs warned in 2003 that any payment for the requests would be a deliberate bid to “kill the bill”.

Oireachtas transcripts from a decade-old Dáil debate on the then Fianna Fáil/PD coalition’s plan to impose a €15 fee for FoI requests show Labour and Fine Gael figures deeply opposed the move.

However, 10 years on, the same officials were until yesterday defending plans to increase how much it costs to obtain public records, which often reveal otherwise hidden information.