Student Section

Information and You

Without information people cannot make informed decisions. When buying clothes or a car, deciding where to go on holidays or what phone company to connect to, people need to know what they are getting for their money.

The same principle applies to government. Government does not mean just the Dáil, the Seanad and the Cabinet; it operates at all levels of society and impacts on people in many different ways. Decisions of the Dáil and Seanad to introduce new laws is an obvious example of how government works. So, too, is a decision of the Department of Education and Science to allocate funds to a school to build a state-of-the-art science laboratory, or, conversely, to turn down an application for funds to construct a new school gym. Decisions by City and County Councils to introduce new bus lanes, build new drainage schemes or grant or refuse planning permission to extend your home or build a new one are examples of the activities of local government. Similarly, the Health Service Executive may decide to close a hospital in one particular location or it might put more resources into cancer treatment in one county in preference to another. This, too, is an example of government in action.

Government activity is carried out by a range of public bodies such as the Department of Education and Science, County Councils, the Health Service Executive, FÁS, the Environmental Protection Agency and many others. They all have two things in common, namely, they deliver services to the public and the cost of running them comes from our taxes. Collectively, they are known as the public service. Banks, insurance companies, telephone companies and many other organisations also deliver services to the public. But they are not funded from taxation. The cost of running them comes form the profits they generate. Collectively, these types of organisations are known as the private sector.

In 1997, the Dáil and the Seanad passed a law, known as the Freedom of Information Act which gives people the right to look for information about how government and the public service is run. Decisions made by the Government, the Oireachtas, civil servants, local politicians and public servants have the potential to affect all of us at some stage in our lives. Naturally, people have opinions and concerns about the wisdom of such decisions when they are made. They may even want to challenge some of them. However, without knowing the facts and thinking behind them, these opinions are ill-informed. People have a legal right to the information behind such decisions, and "freedom of information" is the term used to describe that right.

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