The Freedom of Information Bill which was published yesterday, having been shepherded through a tortuously-long drafting process by Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, has already fallen victim to widespread misunderstanding. It is a modest but necessary step in a direction which the political culture of this State has long eschewed. As a legislative measure it will be welcomed. But it represents a tentative and overdue breaching of an outdated principle rather than the attainment of a brave new world.
First the misunderstandings. This is not a piece of legislation which is about newspapers or journalists. Media practitioners will, no doubt, find that its provisions can assist them in some of their activities. But this is first and foremost an affirmation of the individual citizen's rights. It confers no special privileges upon the journalist or the media organisation. Its provisions apply to every member of the public.
It aims firstly at providing the citizen with access to official information which is of direct, personal relevance. Its central concept is the removal of the presumption of secrecy which has hitherto attached to official information, replacing it with an assumption of openness. But there will be severe limitations and many exceptions to this rule. All in all there may be as many as 120 categories of information which may be withheld "in the public interest". Some - such as security and defence information - are understandable. Others are less easy to justify and will prove controversial in time.
Ms Fitzgerald's instincts would almost certainly be to bring this measure further in the direction of openness. But she has been confronted by a great weight of resistance. Not many of her colleagues in Government are imbued with the spirit of transparency which gave birth to the Bill in the first place. There are constitutional and legal influences as well, all weighted towards secrecy and concealment. Ours is a legal tradition derived from Common Law and very different from the open government models of the Scandinavian countries, for example. Nor have influential figures within the bureaucracy been slow in pointing out the dangers and difficulties in opening the floodgates of public inquiry.
Professional seekers-after-information, including journalists, will not be especially impressed with the Bill. It will make routine inquiries easier. Much journalistic time is currently taken up searching out information for individuals which they should have as of right. But it would be difficult, for example, to envisage this legislation being of conclusive value in investigating any of the serious public issues which have arisen in recent years. The mysteries of the beef industry, the Departments of Justice or Health, or the planning departments of certain local authorities would remain unfathomed as before.
There is a depressing consistency over this Government's policy on information and the right of the citizen to have access to it, either directly or through the media. There has been no move on Cabinet confidentiality, notwithstanding a commitment to do so. There has been no move on the libel laws, notwithstanding calls for change by the Law Reform Commission and the fact that a draft Bill was presented by the newspapers. And the development of a substantial body of European jurisprudence extending the freedoms of the press has been ignored.
This hesitant Freedom of Information Bill proposal represents the sum total of Mr Bruton's promises on openness and transparency when he took up office more than two years ago. Cynics will be forgiven for remarking on the coincidence of its publication as Mr Michael Lowry is due in the Dail to explain his dealings with Mr Ben Dunne.