THE Minister of State responsible for freedom of information legislation has said she "looked forward to the day" the Official Secrets Act would be repealed.
Ms Eithne Fitzgerald told a weekend conference of the European Federation of Journalists in Dublin Castle that the Government was committed to act on the recommendations of the Dail Committee on Security and Legislation.
At a recent meeting of the committee the Minister indicated the freedom of information legislation would substantially amend the Act, but it would still be necessary to maintain it on the statute books.
However, the Minister was accused at the conference of not going far enough with the legislation. Mr Ronan Brady, of the Irish executive of the National Union of Journalists, said it was disappointing that the Cabinet seemed unwilling to back full disclosure of information.
"The big guns in the Cabinet have hived off their own position and it will still be possible for secrets to be kept against the public interest. In certain areas, Ministers will be able to issue secrecy certificates irrespective of whether it would be in the interests of the citizens for the information to come out", he said
Mr Brady accepted that security, defence, international relations and Northern Ireland sensitive areas, but the line on secrecy had to be the public interest, not party political interests. He called for the courts to have a role and said it was not enough that a Taoiseach could simply rubber stamp such a certificate.
The Minister said secrecy certificates would only be used in very limited circumstances. She was confident the courts would uphold the issuing of certificates and insisted that checks would guard against abuse. Cabinet colleagues would have to be informed when certificates were issued, the Taoiseach would review the workings of the certificate system and the independent Information Commissioner would have to be informed of the number issued, she said.
The fact that something is secret does not necessarily make it newsworthy, nor does the fact that information is publicly available make it automatically devoid of public interest, the Minister said.
If 95 per cent of all official information comes into the public domain, the jobs of the journalist will be less about digging for secrets than about sifting the wealth of important, openly available information for what is genuinely of interest in holding public bodies and elected politicians to account.
"There has been a media intrusion into the private lives of ordinary citizens. Those, of us who stand for election attract and deserve to have our faults held up to public exposure. Private citizens, where there is no public interest involved, do not deserve to have their personal details splashed across the front pages.
"Freedom of information on matters of public interest and the protection of personal privacy are, I believe, mutually compatible and that balance is carefully managed in the Bill", she said.
The Freedom of Information Bill will be published within the next few months.