The ombudsman Peter Tyndall has said the State’s new €1.25 billion Land Development Agency (LDA) should not be shielded from Freedom of Information (FoI) laws, as is currently intended by the Government. TransparencyThe housing committee today heard concerns in relation to the proposed exemption from the laws to be carved out for the agency. In her opening statement, Ms Hegarty said FoI “is essential for ensuring the public confidence, transparency and accountability, and there are already adequate legislative exemptions in place for commercially sensitive information, without a blanket exemption”. Professor Rob Kitchin of the department of geography at NUI Maynooth agreed that the LDA should be open to FoI, “with specific queries that have commercial sensitivity being assessed on a case-by-case basis”. If the Minister is not willing to do this it will limit both the transparency and accountability of the LDA and given that it is to be in the receipt of €1.2n billion of taxpayers money this is simply not justifiable.

Source: The Irish Times October 15, 2019 18:45 UTC