The Government's recent decision to go for a partial underground Luas light rail system in the centre of Dublin was almost bound to provide an acid test of the new Freedom of Information Act, so soon after this "let in the light" law came into effect on April 21st. It was, after all, a highly contentious decision. What's more, although the Cabinet was expected to make up its mind on the W.S. Atkins study of the on-street and underground options on April 28th, it deferred the matter for a week for "further detailed consideration".

There is every reason to believe that the initial memorandum submitted by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, favoured accepting the consultants' recommendation to proceed with CIE's onstreet proposal. But there is no way of telling for sure.

Perhaps, thought Mr Ronan Brady - a leading member of Let in the Light, the campaign for more openness in Irish society - a formal request to the Department of Public Enterprise under the Freedom of Information Act might be useful in flushing out the facts.

So he sent an email message to the Department seeking access to the professional and technical advice provided to the Government. "I decided to do this because the Act isn't retrospective, and Luas was one of the most significant decisions made since it came into force," he said. With remarkable promptness, Ms Mairead Broderick, a higher executive officer in the Department, sent a letter to Mr Brady just 12 days later saying that she had decided to grant his request and to provide him with "the relevant records" that pertained to it.

Ms Broderick's letter noted that the provisions of Section 19 (3)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act "allow access only to factual information relating to a decision of the Government that has been published". Thus, "all details other than factual information have been deleted".

Enclosed were what purported to be copies of two memoranda for Government, together with the Atkins report, its technical annexes, a summary entitled "Key Issues and Conclusions" and copies of overheads used by the consultants in their presentation to the Cabinet.

With the exception of the two memorandums, all of the information provided was already in the public domain; even the overheads merely give a summary of the main conclusions reached by Atkins. And the two memorandums are so heavily doctored as to be virtually useless.

The first memorandum, dated April 27th, starts with a phrase that's common to all such for Government, "Decision Sought". However, although a lay person might imagine that this would comprise wholly factual information, its entire content has been deleted. This edited version of the memorandum goes on to deal with the background to the Atkins report, recalling that the "Action Programme for the Millennium" (Fianna Fail's coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats last June) had pledged to carry out an underground study.

It mentions the options examined by the consultants and details their conclusions in points 3 to 5, including their recommendation in favour of proceeding with the CIE scheme. But all the remaining points - 6, 7, 8 and 9 - are blank, apart from a single repeated word: DELETED.

In the second edited memorandum, dated May 1st, Point 1 - Decision Sought - is also blank and, this time, so is Point 2, dealing with the background to it. Point 3, detailing the reasons for the decision, is covered in full, before the document runs into a flurry of deletions.

In giving the reasons in favour of a tunnel for Luas between St Stephen's Green and Broadstone, the Department is telling us nothing that we don't already know; indeed, all of this information was given in the press release issued after the crucial Cabinet meeting on May 5th.

The edited version of Point 4 contains just two sentences stating that the Tallaght/O'Connell Street section of the light rail system "can probably be brought to construction relatively quickly" and that it would be "fully consistent with CIE's existing application for a light railway order".

This, too, is on the public record. But the rest of Point 4 is deleted, as well as Points 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10. And that's where it ends, apart from including Point 9, a relatively anodyne reference to the Atkins study's view that Luas alone would not solve Dublin's transport problems. What the Department seems to be relying on to justify its copious deletions is Section 18 (2)(a) of the Act, which exempts any record that "reveals, or from which may be inferred, the substance of the whole or part" of a statement made at a meeting of the Government. In other words, the "doctrine" of Cabinet confidentiality, upheld by the Supreme Court and now written into the Constitution following a referendum last June, overrides access to information and the public's right to know the basis on which Government decisions are made.

SO, although we may suspect that Mary O'Rourke first proposed going ahead with CIE's on-street Luas project and then had to change course in the face of opposition from the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, and even the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, no official record will reveal that to us.

To that extent, the Freedom of Information Act must be regarded as something of a sham. It has been shown as completely useless in this case, at least, which means that we will have to wait until the year 2028 for the relevant documents to be released under the 30-year rule.

Mr Brady is appealing to the Ombudsman, Mr Kevin Murphy, who has a supervisory role in this area, and he believes that anyone else who receives incomplete records should do the same until the Civil Service gets the message and begins to change its culture of official secrecy.

Next Friday, Let in the Light is holding a one-day conference, "Making Freedom of Information Work", at Dublin City University, followed by a half-day training workshop for intensive users of the legislation. Further information from Pamela Galvin at (01) 704 5227