Sir, – Brendan Howlin’s decision to withdraw a proposal which would have made Irish Freedom of Information (FoI) the laughing stock of Europe is to be welcomed (Home News, November 14th). But despite his promises of reform, he still intends to retain one key part of the clampdown imposed by Charlie McCreevy a decade ago: the €15 up-front fee for requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
This penalty on information is no “token charge” as the Minister has suggested. It’s a serious disincentive for freelance journalists to pursue potential stories. Most freelances work on very tight margins. If they were able to do their jobs properly, they ought to be able to make two or three requests a day. Of course that’s impossible with these charges.
It’s the public that suffers as a result of this and that fact has been recognised throughout Europe. Mr Howlin seems unaware that, far from normal practice, such charges are the absolute exception.
FoI actually saves the public purse large sums of money in the long run, as the NUJ and others have repeatedly shown. Of course those savings don't matter to the bureaucrats who draft penalties like this one. They only measure the height of paper in their in-trays.
Over the decades, Labour’s commitment to transparency seemed strong and sincere. In 1997 it faced down the bureaucracy. What a pity Brendan Howlin isn’t Eithne Fitzgerald! – Yours, etc,
RONAN BRADY,
(Journalism lecturer,
Griffith College Dublin),
Geraldine Street,
Dublin 7.