There is a certain kind of statement with which no-one can disagree, not because it is true but because it is so pious as to be beyond public questioning. To say, for example, that you are opposed to war has the same moral content as an expression of opposition to air crashes, but it has the appearance of virtue, and that is often all that matters, writes John Waters.
The most fashionable such sentiment at the moment is the idea that "information is a right". It does not require much contemplation to perceive this as an empty piety, a risible overstatement, a piece of nonsense. Like, what kind of information? All information? About everything?
Quite obviously, there is, if any, a limited right to information; and yet, this vacuity is repeated ad nauseam as though it were a self-demonstrating truth.
It will earn you a stout clap from the audience of Questions and Answers or cause Joe Duffy to make that whimpering noise he emits when a Liveline caller says something particularly heartfelt.
And now it has become the main turn in the travelling circus being toured by the new Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, Ms Emily O'Reilly.
Flying, or so it appears, in the face of the government that appointed her, Ms O'Reilly has seemed to be taking up the cudgels on behalf of a public supposedly disgruntled by the allegedly excessive charges being levied on applications and appeals under Freedom of Information legislation she is herself charged with operating.
Under the new regulations, requests for non-personal information will cost €15, with charges of €75 for an appeal and €150 for an appeal to the Information Commissioner.
In her first public address last week, the Ombudsman repeated sentiments she had earlier expressed in interviews, when she told the Institute of European Affairs that the new charges will pose a "massive disincentive to accessing what is a right - information", and adversely affect accountability of public bodies.
I would have thought that part of the rationale for the charges is precisely to provide a disincentive - to discourage speculative or vexatious information requests which might have the effect of gumming up the works.
But I am more interested in Ms O'Reilly's reliance on the notion that information "is a right". It strikes me that if this were any more than a vacuous snatch of cant, we wouldn't need to pay an Information Commissioner roughly eight times the average industrial wage to decide which information applications are valid and which are not. Information is not a right. In the precise context of which the Ombudsman was speaking, information is a matter of official discretion, which is what Ms O'Reilly is being paid to exercise.
The idea that the charges are too high is a sanctimonious unprovability.
What might the correct charges be, and who should decide? The idea that things are too dear is one everyone will agree with, so Ms O'Reilly was making what she may have expected to be a fairly uncontroversial statement. But we live in a money democracy, in which almost everything, including the office of Ombudsman, has a price.
It might be argued, for example, that not dying of hunger is a "right", but try that argument instead of money down at Tesco's. These days you pay for everything, and often more than once. Food, drinking-water, electricity, newspapers, public services, all come at a price, which most people would prefer not to have to pay.
The idea that "information" is some kind of uniquely sacred resource is a pious notion put about by self-serving journalists for whom information is as leather to a cobbler. I might advance the far more plausible notion that justice "is a right", but that will not save me having to throw the keys of my home on the bench if I go to court in defence of my livelihood, my parenthood or my reputation.
But the information-is-a-right kind of zero-statement goes down well with a public who will naïvely think Ms O'Reilly is risking something by seemingly seeking confrontation with the government that appointed her. In reality, such outbursts underwrite her position, for what politicians would dare shaft a public official so valiantly outspoken "in the public interest"?
Given her seemingly intractable opposition to the present level of charges, she has, I believe, three choices:
(1) Resign.
(2) Volunteer for a substantial wage-cut to be passed on to users of her office.
(3) Shut up and do the job she is being paid to do.