Fees for free information misguided

PUBLIC Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin has made a last ditch attempt to thwart transparency with a cynical amendment he has looked to slip into the new Freedom of Information bill.

This measure was never floated in the public consultation process or during the Oireachtas hearings, but emerged with just days to go to this week’s committee stage vote.

The minister might argue, contrary to statistical evidence, that it is a designed to reduce the cost of dealing with requests across the public sector. However, had his amendment been in place two years ago, it would in all likelihood have cost the State €37,500 on one request alone.

This would have been lost because the amendment would refuse to answer the key question without the payment of an extra €15.

The amendment Mr Howlin has tabled will change the Act to ensure any request that is “made up of two or more parts seeking separate and distinct information relating to functions and responsibilities carried out by different functional areas of the FoI body… the requester shall be required to pay a further fee”.

In short, that is an extra €15, and a new process, to ask an additional question unless it fits neatly into the bureaucratic pigeon holes created by each agency.

This matters because to ask for information, and to understand the context of it, a conscientious journalist or campaigner needs to look for more than just one document.

Wading through FoI requests is boring work and makes for tedious commentary. But for a moment, consider this case study.

In 2011 this newspaper sent a multi-faceted request, the kind Mr Howlin wants to outlaw, to the Department of Agriculture.

Firstly, it looked for documents relating to the decision of Coillte to defy the minister and pay a bonus to its then chief executive, David Gunning. That was the truck but the request had a trailer.

The second question asked for all correspondence between other bodies in relation to the pay, bonuses, and contracts of the chief executive. A third section asked for briefing notes to the minister or secretary general. Both were less specific but there was a strategy.

The purpose was to find out what was going on at Coillte, then to see if the same issue existed elsewhere, and finally to assess which senior figures in the department had been told about it.

According to the department’s organisational chart, Horse Racing Ireland, the Irish Greyhound Board, and the Irish National Stud are part of a different division — the state body’s co-ordination office.

Coillte reports to the forestry section in Johnstown.

So if Mr Howlin had his way, the second two questions would have been cut off and sent back to ask for more money and new process. Crucially, this would have been without the context provided by Coillte.

As it happens, the second part of that request revealed different issues.

At the time, both the chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland and the Irish Greyhound Board had been working without signing a contract.

The boards were acting in defiance of the expressed orders of the department. When this was highlighted, in this newspaper, the department cracked the whip and the contracts were signed.

However, the request also revealed that one of the disputes between Horse Racing Ireland and the department was the firm’s decision to pay backdated bonuses to its chief executive, Brian Kavanagh.

When this was reported on by this newspaper, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney intervened and Mr Kavanagh quickly repaid €37,500 worth of bonuses to the company.

This is just one example from the thousands of FoI requests that are submitted each year. However, Mr Howlin has not seen the economic value of the engagement.

He has flown in the face of international best practice to retain the €15 application fees in fear that people would start asking more questions.

The latest amendment seems to myopically see FoI as a burden on staff in public agencies rather than a benefit to society for its ability to maintain casual scrutiny of the public sector. This must all be viewed in the context of what he hopes to achieve.

Last year, a total of €59,166 was raised across every single public body in the country by initial fees. Even if Mr Howlin succeeds in having each application split into three, the extra income to the State will be €118,332.

This does not take into account the bills from additional envelopes, stamps, workload to type new letters, and the administration costs to process cheques.

That even assumes requesters persist and, despite being denied the context, submit the second and third questions.

When Mr Howlin stands in the Dáil this week and explains his logic, it can all be put alongside the one extra question, from just one FoI request, that saved the State €37,500 in 2011.