Politicians and limousines
WHY does it come as no surprise that, as long as 30 years ago, politicians were lashing out taxpayers' punts on chauffeur driven limousines?
State papers for the year 1979 reveal that the then Minister for the Public Service George Colley was so concerned that he sent a confidential memo to the heads of all departments complaining about persistent extravagance on travel and "subsistence".
Fast forward to the year 2009, and the Taoiseach Brian Cowen is grumbling: "I have no problem whatsoever with the legitimate use of the Freedom of Information Act . . . However, the idea of the department trawling every question that comes in from people who, perhaps, regard the departments of State as a source for generating information was not within the contemplation of the Freedom of Information Act and, to be honest, is abuse of the process."
The point is, if there had been a Freedom of Information Act back in 1979, politicians' waste of public funds might have become common knowledge and reform might have begun sooner.
In recent times, media requests, under the Act, have revealed exotic expenses scandals that have angered "ordinary" people.
Of course, in a perfect world, as the Taoiseach hinted, there would be no need for a tiresome, time-wasting Freedom of Information Act.
Taxpayers and voters in a free, democratic country, are simply 100pc entitled to freedom of information. Only if a government was up to something dodgy would it try to withhold information from the public.
