Spending at Áras has to be made public: FF
FIANNA Fáil is to table legislation that will bring the office of the President under the remit of Freedom of Information laws when the Dáil returns in September.
Each year, some €7million of taxpayers’ money is spent running Áras an Uachtaráin, but under current rules the office is exempt from FOI laws that could shed light on how those funds are being spent.
It comes as the Dáil’s powerful Public Accounts Committee mulls over whether to investigate the Presidency’s spending ahead of the election later this year.
Yesterday, Longford-Westmeath TD Robert Troy announced that he intends to bring in laws to make the spending by the Áras more transparent.
He said: ‘I don’t see any reason why the office of the Presidency should be exempt from Freedom Of Information. On that basis, I myself am currently working on legislation that I hope to introduce in September which will see the extension of the Freedom Of Information Act to the office of the Presidency.’
A spokesperson for the Government said they could not comment on legislation that they hadn’t seen yet, but signalled they have little appetite for changing the law.
‘The position remains, as previously stated, that the Government has no plans to amend the Freedom Of Information Act 2014 as it relates to the President,’ they said.
Records relating to the President are excluded from FOI legislation since its introduction in 1997.
Chairman of the PAC and Fianna Fáil TD Seán Fleming said any investigation would have to be completed before the election campaign begins.
‘I think people would not be happy if a discussion took place sometime after the election and information emerged that they felt should have been on the table and made public before they went to vote’ he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
‘Secondly, I don’t think it should happen in the immediate run up when candidates are in the field. So we either have to move immediately when we come back to get it out of the way by the end of September.”
Mr Fleming insisted there was no ‘agenda’ behind the proposed investigation into Áras spending.
‘I personally as chairman wouldn’t like to be doing this in the middle of a Presidential campaign, lest some people would use some information in the wrong way,’ he said.
‘The reason this has come to light is that journalists have now established that they cannot obtain any information at all on the running of Áras an Uachtaráin, of €7million a year, under Freedom Of Information.