In the Seanad on 4 March 2003, speaking on the 2nd Stage of the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2003, I said:

With all due consideration, I would say today is one of the saddest days of my experience as a Senator.

Colleagues will know me as a perennial optimist. Over the past ten years, I have generally found it possible to welcome most of the Bills which have come before us for scrutiny. I was able to do so because, for the most part, those Bills represented a step forward - a step which was sometimes hesitant but, nonetheless, a step into a new Ireland and a changing world.

Today, we have been presented with what I would describe as a step backwards into the age of darkness because that is whole thrust of this Bill. This legislation harks back to an era when Government by stealth was the order of the day and when knowledge was considered to be power not to be shared with anybody outside the ruling clique of the time. This Bill seeks to drag us back to an Ireland from which I believed we had decisively moved away once and for all in 1997.

To say this is not to oppose the idea of reviewing the impact of legislation. In fact, I have consistently advocated that. Senator Maurice Hayes and others spoke about Cabinet confidentiality being extended from five years to ten years. There is sense in some of these proposals. I am not arguing that there is not a case to be made for some of the changes set out in the Bill but the argument made for others is less than compelling.

I refer to the overall thrust of this Bill and the manner in which it was introduced, about which others have spoken. There was no consultation with the various interests involved. As regards the manner in which the Bill is being processed in the Oireachtas, it was introduced virtually before the ink was dry. It was published on Friday but many of us did not receive it until yesterday. Some of us did not get it until today.

There is what appears to be a fairly rigid timetable for getting it through both Houses. Taking all those things together, it is impossible to see how we can regard this measure as anything other than an attempt to roll back history by those who would thwart the right of people to know how we are governed and substitute for that right a closed system dominated by a largely unaccountable elite. That is the way we lived in the past.

I do not for one moment doubt that the present freedom of information legislation has shortcomings which should be addressed. I am a great believer in looking back at legislation and readdressing it. However, that should take place after careful consideration and consultation. It is one thing to fine-tune a critical part of our democratic heritage, it is another to seek to undermine its very effectiveness and make it a dead letter.

The forces behind this change are no friends of democracy or the people. They are not believers in open government. They are, I suggest, its enemy. They have been biding their time since the Act was passed in 1997, waiting for the moment to strike.

I ask whether the Government really knows what it is doing in acquiescing in this rush to spancel our freedom and the freedom of information regime we established only five or six years ago.

Does the Government not appreciate the enormous sea change that the passage of the original legislation only six years ago represented?

Does it not realise the nature of the message it is now sending out to the people of Ireland by seeking to tamper with this regime in what I would call a hasty, ill-considered and self-serving way?

When the Bill was passed in 1997, we all hoped it was merely a first step on the road to openness and transparency in government. We pointed to the example of the Scandinavian countries where every document of Government was automatically considered to be public property and available to everybody almost immediately. We reminded ourselves that they seemed to be able to do their business very well on that basis. We pointed to the benefits of such an approach in bringing people closer to the whole political process.

We have had difficulty in persuading sufficient numbers to vote in recent times. The polls have been lower. One of our objectives should be to bring citizens into the political process. We have not been very successful in doing so. The Freedom of Information Act was the first step in that direction.

We pointed not just to the experience of the Scandinavian countries but also to the experience of the United States which had a tradition of open government. We pointed to the experience of a growing number of other countries around the world which had adopted a similar approach. We were not leading the field in this. Others had done so. While we were reasonably well advanced when we came in in 1997, we were not leading the way. However, we were in no doubt six years ago that the road of openness was to be the highway of the future.

In 1997 we were hopeful, above all, that the next steps we took in legislating in this area would be in the opposite direction to the one we are taking today, that we would extend the scope of the original Act by building on our initial experience and strike out further along the path to full openness, accountability and transparency.

Instead we have this dreadful and shaming little Bill that is being hastily brought before us.

This is legislation prepared by people who hate the very idea of freedom of information and who will do everything in their power to frustrate its concept in action. Theirs is the way of secrecy, a belief grounded in the approach that as much knowledge as possible should be kept from the citizens of this republic. They believe in putting barriers in the public's way rather than in assisting them to obtain the information that should be theirs by right.

What is so saddening is that this philosophy, this world view, if I can call it that, is decisively a thing of the past. Right around the world, movement is in the other direction. To head backwards as the Bill threatens to do will have very real and practical consequences in terms of our national and political well-being.

For the past decade or more it has become commonplace to bemoan the way ordinary people are losing interest in politics, that we have not had the sort of polls we used to have in the past, and the growing irrelevancy of Parliament to the vast majority of our citizens.

While we are quick to bemoan these things, we are much slower to do anything concrete to improve the situation. The Freedom of Information Act 1997 was one step. I have always held the view that the closer people can be brought to the political process and the more they are involved in the running of the country, the healthier will be the political atmosphere created. That should be and was our objective. We were taking steps in the right direction.

That is the reason I have always attached the greatest importance to the principle of openness and accountability in carrying out our responsibilities in these Houses, welcomed the original legislation with such open arms and mourn the direction we have this week decided to take.

I said this was the saddest day of my time here as a Senator. I do not think that was an overstatement. This is a day the House will live to regret. By passing this Bill - I hope we do not pass it as it stands - we are turning our back on the future and taking a decisive step into the past.

While I do not welcome the Bill, we could make of it something that is not as backward a step as it seems at first glance. I hope the Minister will listen to what is being said and that a sufficient number of amendments will be accepted to change the whole tenor of the Bill. The Government should change its mind. It would do far better to take the Bill back, think it over and come up with a new Bill.