Government hiding behind the excuse "legal reasons"

zootroid

The report into the Monageer tragedy has been blacked out for legal reasons according to Cowen. Now while this may be true for the public, surely the opposition are entitled to see it in full?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0514/1224246462084.html

I also remember at the time the emergency budget was coming out, long serving payments to TDs could not be altered, again for legal reasons. Is this just a convenient excuse so the government can do what it wishes?

P. Breathnach

zootroid wrote: »

... Is this just a convenient excuse so the government can do what it wishes?

How could we know?

nesf

zootroid wrote: »

Is this just a convenient excuse so the government can do what it wishes?

How would anyone here know? Seriously, the only people able to comment on this are legal professionals with full access to the details of the report and I doubt any of them will be gracing us with their presence.

thebman

If it is the first time that even recommendations were blacked out, it does seem suspicious.

On the other hand I can't see how much negative information could be in the report that woudl require it to be censored.

I wouldn't put it past the government to do it but I'd assume they aren't lying until there is evidence that they are censoring.

John_C

thebman wrote: »

On the other hand I can't see how much negative information could be in the report that woudl require it to be censored.

There's a line in the constitution which says that a person is entitled to their good name so if (for example) the original report said that a social worker or a guard made a mistake, that would have to be removed.

thebman

John_C wrote: »

There's a line in the constitution which says that a person is entitled to their good name so if (for example) the original report said that a social worker or a guard made a mistake, that would have to be removed.

That wouldn't be in the recommendations though unless it was specifically mentioned to avoid the incident like the one that happened with Paddy ever happening again in which case it is probably more bad writing IMO (no that I'm the one to ask )

InFront

John_C wrote: »

There's a line in the constitution which says that a person is entitled to their good name so if (for example) the original report said that a social worker or a guard made a mistake, that would have to be removed.

But surely to protect the individual's good name all that would need to be censored would be the name itself, not the related circumstances which presumably are included in the report because they are relevant.

Personally I believe that the censorship in this case is solely down to legal advice and nothing more sinister on behalf of the Government. For one thing, with so many other big political fish around, the story would still not be big enough to rock the political boat significantly. Notwithstanding this it would be interesting to hear further details about the legal basis for censoring some of the findings and recommendations based on the Attorney General's advice.

JonathanAnon

Things like this really dishearten me. I would have two main points about this.

1. If a man wants to kill himself and his family, he will dodge any attempts that social services make to intervene. It may have been possible that more could have been done, but hard cases make bad laws, and to base the whole system on one freak event is not the right way to go about things.

2. To waste public money on a report when the redact half of it, even the recommendations, makes the whole thing pointless. Is nobody in public life prepared to be accountable for their actions. Personally, I dont blame anybody in the public service for dropping the ball in this case (see point 1 above) and even still nobody is prepared to stand up and say: "It was my job, this is what I did, this is what I did not do." I assuming all of these people were well paid for their time, so why are we not allowed to question them about the work they were paid for doing.

Just shoveling money into the fire again.

The_Minister

OP, why would they trust the Opposition with a confidential report?

It would just be "leaked" to the press.

zootroid

Perhaps, unless is was forbidden to do so. If it was given to the opposition and leaked, it couldn't be that hard to track down the leak.

But I always thought (and I'm open to correction here) that all TDs have access to the same information, that say the Taoiseach cannot restrict access to a piece of information from say the leader of the opposition.

I suppose what I was getting at is back at the emergency budget, "legal reasons" was the answer why certain things could not be done that the public wanted to be done. And now I see the same reason again. With exception to items that clash with the constitution, legal reasons can't really be a valid reason, after all they are the ones who make the laws!! Of course, allowing for the time/expense of creating new laws or changing existing ones.