The Government is set to impose restrictions on the public's right to get information from public bodies under the Freedom of Information Act, following a review by senior civil servants.
A Bill to amend the 1997 legislation is due to come before the Cabinet in the next fortnight and to begin its passage through the Oireachtas between now and Easter, according to the Government's legislative list, published late last month.
The Cabinet wants to row back on a clause in the original legislation due to come into force in April, which would have granted the public some access to papers presented to the Cabinet before January 1998.
Ministers are believed to fear that the five-year timetable is too generous, though it is not yet known whether the Department of Finance will introduce a less generous version of the clause, or abandon it entirely.
However, a high-level group of civil servants has also recommended that the Government should go further and impose restrictions on the way the legislation has worked up to now.
According to the latest figures published by the Department of Finance, there were 11,690 applications under the Act in the last nine months of 2001 - a significant rise on the previous figures.
However, many Government departments have taken an increasingly restrictive interpretation of the Act, particularly dealing with the 18 per cent of applications coming from the press.
In addition, departments have reacted very differently when faced with identical FOI applications, with some releasing quite sensitive papers, and others imposing a blanket refusal on all documents, except previously published press statements.
Senior civil servants have long argued that the Act is extremely costly for departments to operate, and consumes large numbers of staff at a time when staffing pressures are increasingly acute.
The final shape of the amending legislation has been kept under close wraps by the Government, though it is expected to offer departments even greater grounds for refusals and to make FOI applications more costly.
Currently, applications by individuals for information held on file about themselves are not subject to any time limit. "People have to go back years looking for files. It is very difficult. Some people have grudges against State bodies," said one source involved.
The Department of Finance has not sought the opinion of the Information Commissioner and Ombudsman, Mr Kevin Murphy, who has the final say on applications, on the changes that should be made to the legislation.
Sources opposed to new restrictions in the operation of the Act yesterday said that Government departments and local authorities already had more than sufficient means to deal with vexatious requests.
"They could refuse the request and refer the matter on to the Information Commissioner. But some of them don't seem to want to do that either," one source with a close knowledge of day-to-day operations of the Act told The Irish Times.
