Changes now being proposed to the Act would have prevented disclosure of details of the extravagant Sports Campus Ireland project, writes Frank McDonald
If it wasn't for the Freedom of Information Act, the State might now be locked into a contract to build a national stadium and a range of other sports facilities on the 500-acre Abbotstown site in north Dublin, exposing taxpayers to a bill exceeding €700 million.
From the time the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, first announced in October 1998 that the Government had decided to commission a feasibility study for the development of a "state-of-the-art" national stadium, the project was progressed at breakneck speed by a steering committee.
Before the end of May 1999, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the consultants who carried out the study, proposed an 80,000-seat stadium as the centrepiece of a "Campus of Sporting Excellence", catering for as many sports as possible on the same site. Within a month, the site occupied by the State laboratories at Abbotstown was chosen for this development.
There was a tentative estimate of £160 million (€203 million) for the stadium element, but no detailed costing had been done for the rest of the campus.
Bookmaker and financier J.P. McManus had already offered to subscribe £50 million towards the cost of the project and there was widespread expectation that other private sector investors could be found, although it was clear that the Exchequer would have to chip in.
Senior civil servants, especially in the Department of Finance, had serious reservations about the Abbotstown adventure. Ms Julie O'Neill, assistant secretary in the Department of Tourism and Sport, commented at the time that the case for the campus was "flimsy".
Mr Philip Furlong, assistant secretary in the Department of Finance, warned in October 1999 that the Government would have to "pick up a hefty tab" for this "desirable but hardly vitally necessary" sports venture as well as the "massive" cost of relocating the laboratories.
Yet in January 2000, the Government adopted the Abbotstown plan in full with a view to having the entire sports campus, "Bertie Bowl" and all, completed in 2005.
This decision was based on an overall spend estimate of £281 million (€357 million), exclusive of relocation costs.
In a clear breach of Cabinet procedures, the Department of Finance was unable to obtain an advance copy of the memorandum on which the decision was based, "despite the very significant costs of the project", as its second secretary, Mr R.J. Curran, complained.
We know all of this, and much more, thanks to the Department supplying two boxes of documents in response to a request in January 2001 from The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
Under the amendments now proposed, it could have been refused.
Yet it was the publication in March 2001 of a detailed chronology of how the Taoiseach's pet project had been steered, even shimmied, through the system that alerted the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, that something was amiss, causing her to demand an independent review.
By then, the only element of the project for which a contract had been signed - in favour of Waterworld UK, later exposed by The Irish Times as a dormant £2 shelf company - was the National Aquatic Centre, which the Taoiseach officially opened on Monday.
However, in November 2000 - as the documents provided by the Department of Finance showed - Ms Laura Magahy, director of executive services for the project, had said: "We envisage being in a contractual situation for those elements by the middle of next year."
The Exchequer would then have found itself locked into an expenditure of €702 million at Abbotstown, according to High Point Rendel, the consultants who carried out the review.
And that nightmare scenario might have happened without the Freedom of Information Act.