Access to information - Ruling on cabinet file is welcome

A GREAT deal of the panic that caused such decimation on the world’s financial markets is caused by uncertainty; by not knowing what is really going on.

A considerable part of that concern was provoked because the banks have yet to concede, in public at least, how much they really stand to lose if they were to revise their loan books to reflect current values.

Everyone knows there’s an elephant in the corner of the room but we all dread the moment we find out whether it’s a plump, touchy-feely, Walt Disney elephant or an enraged tusker intent on vengeance.

Information is being controlled and managed to protect a whole range of interests. In this instance information is real power; the financial security of generations of workers depends on it.

Information is indeed power and that is why it is so closely guarded, so jealously rationed. That is one of the reasons our government, or in fairness most any government, is so uneasy with the principle of transparency as a bulwark of participatory democracy. That is one of the reasons that the natural reticence so characteristic of our culture is at home in politics.

If you must say something, say nothing.

That is why the decision by Information Commissioner Emily O’Reilly to order the Department of the Taoiseach to release cabinet documents concerning greenhouse gas emissions is so welcome. The ruling means that, for the first time, we will have access to certain cabinet documents as soon as they are produced.

Though he has other things on his mind this morning, this finding will disappoint Finance Minister Brian Lenihan who just last May, at a conference marking 10 years of the Freedom of Information Act, said he strongly agreed with the decision to amend the FoI Act to delay the release of cabinet papers for 10 years. Obviously the Information Commissioner did not agree when she decided that the constitution’s strict protection of cabinet confidentiality was trumped by EU law.

It is an indication of how preciously information is guarded that Green Party activist Gary Fitzgerald sought documents that report cabinet discussions on Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions for the years 2002 to 2007 in March 2007. The Government at first refused his request, and after an unsuccessful internal review, Mr Fitzgerald appealed to the Information Commissioner that October.

We should not be surprised at this delay after all, some of the most important bodies in the State — the gardaí, the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, the Refugee Appeals Tribunal, the Vocational Education Committees and their schools, the State Examinations Commission and the Central Applications Office — do not fall under the remit of the FoI.

This act is one of the best tools we have to keep politicians on the straight and narrow and it must not be further undermined. If you think access to information unimportant, if you imagine that its release is random, consider this. This morning, as the focus of more or less every conscious person in the country is on the budget, senior officials from the Financial Regulator’s office will appear before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Economic Regulatory Affairs at noon to discuss the role of the regulator. They may even discuss that office’s role in overseeing the banks. Ordinarily this event would get top billing but it may just be superseded today.

Coincidence or, as a former press officer in Tony Blair’s government infamously said of 9/11... “a good day to bury bad news ...”

You decide.