Health and Safety exemption is a blow to your basic right to know

IT IS said that legislation is like the butcher’s sausage - it can be unpleasant to watch how it is made. This week we saw an interesting example of how bad our law-making process can be sometimes.

Last autumn someone rang the office of Information Commissioner Emily O’Reilly and asked staff there why investigations by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) were no longer covered by the Freedom of Information Act.

The enquirer was met with by a stone-faced response - the information commissioner’s office was unaware that this change had happened.