Thank you, a Leas-Chathaoirligh. I join you in welcoming the distinguished guests of the Cathaoirleach to the Distinguished Visitors Gallery. I see friends there. I have certainly been at many functions with them and I thank them for that. I hope they have a successful day.

I am calling for a debate on open government data and the freedom of information Act. I do so in the context of exempted development. I will quickly take the House through a number of points. On 29 July 2025, submissions opened for the public consultation on the review of exempted development. On 26 August 2025, this public consultation closed to submission. On 14 January 2026, the general scheme of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026 was published. On 28 January, a pre-legislative scrutiny letter was issued on the heads of that Bill. On 26 June, the Bill was introduced on First Stage. The legislation contained sections on exempted development. On 3 July, multiple motions were introduced in the Seanad on exempted development. On 9 July, a freedom of information request was submitted by me to the Department of housing and local government. I requested that under the Freedom of Information Act 2014 the Department release all 900 submissions to the public consultation on the review. On 15 July, motions on exempted development were agreed in Dáil Éireann. On 16 July, the motions were agreed in this House and we moved on. To fast-track it, I then initiated the process and it was refused by the Department. I did the appeal and it was refused by the Department. I paid the fee and it was refused by the Department.

Eventually, it was accepted by the Information Commissioner. Last night, I received a letter before I left this House from the commissioner, which suggested that the offer to withdraw the application did not affect my rights and I was under no obligation to withdraw. Why was that suggested? Having refused me all along, and while I paid all the fees and put a tracker of every part of this process, the Department decided yesterday in its wisdom that it should put it up on gov.ie. Despite all my requests and my refusals, the Department put a limited version of this up. It is very interesting because the Department forgot to take certain names out of it while leaving a lot of names, albeit not intentionally, in another section of it. This morning, I wrote to the commissioner, the Secretary General of the Department and the Minister. I am not withdrawing the process and I formally informed them of that today, so it will proceed. I am writing to every Member of both Houses of the Oireachtas. The email is ready. That is why I want to put it on record. When I leave here, I will be sending a detailed email of the timelines of all sections of it and also the fact that I am not withdrawing the application. I will, of course, be sharing the link to the gov.ie website.

There is more to this. It is about transparency and open and accountable government. In that context, I am now calling for a debate on freedom of information, FOI, open data and protected disclosures. We are all hearing about protected disclosures. Many politicians in the last two weeks have been talking about protected disclosures made externally to here. We need protected disclosure legislation that supports politicians in Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann. That is the genesis. That is the request. We want openness, transparency and open data in government central to the Houses of the Oireachtas and I intend to continue bringing this up every week until we get this. I am confident that I will be successful in this.

I thank the Deputy Leader for her time.