Committee recommends an enhanced role for Ombudsmen in Irish society

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Service Oversight and Petitions today published its ‘Report on hearings in relation to the Role and Remit of an Ombudsman’. This report examines the current landscape for the seven ombudsmen (reducing to 6 on the agreement of a proposed merger of the Pensions Ombudsman and the Financial Service Ombudsman) and also puts forward detailed recommendations that aim to enhance the role of the Ombudsmen and the provision for the citizen.

21st January 2016

Some of the report’s findings and recommendations include:

•    The Joint Committee recommends that for an office with the title or function of Ombudsman, then the Ombudsman or An Coimisinéir Teanga must have the following five powers/features: be an officer of parliament; be independent of the executive; receive all complaints directly; have the power to investigate them and recommend remedies and redress
•    The Joint Committee recommends that where an Ombudsman identifies injustice they should seek to put that injustice right and central to putting an identified injustice right, is redress
•    The Joint Committee recommends that all ombudsmen who have a full or partial public service remit be constitutionally based; as a minimum both the Office of the Ombudsman for the Public Service and the Office of the Ombudsman for Children must be constitutionally based
•    The Joint Committee recommend that provision should be made to allow the rejection, overturning or setting aside a report or a recommendation or recommendations in a report of the Ombudsman, but this must require a Dáil Vote where 75% of those present and voting assent to the proposal
•    The Joint Committee recommends that the provisions of confidentiality associated with professional legal advice be addressed by way of amendment(s) to the primary legislation establishing each of the 6 offices of Ombudsman. Further, the Joint Committee also recommends that the amendments, in regard to the 6 offices of Ombudsman  including An Coimisinéir Teanga, addresses and strengthens the level, in terms of confidentiality  that each office possesses so as to permit each Office confidentiality access or power of access to confidential or professional legal advice

Committee Chair, Pádraig MacLochlainn, said: “To begin, the Committee addressed the benchmarks that determine what an Ombudsman is, what an Ombudsman does and what the citizens/public expect an Ombudsman to do. In addressing these questions, we met with each of the Ombudsmen and held wide ranging debates on how they felt they could be better supported by Parliament.”

“An Ombudsman must be an officer of parliament; an Ombudsman is an administrative justice system where the Ombudsman is independent and impartial and is neither an advocate for the complainant nor an adversary to the public body; an Ombudsman is a cornerstone of transparency and redress and, by use of the information drawn from complaints the delivery of public services can be improved.”

“As a Committee, we believe that the recommendations in this report, should they be implemented, can bring fundamental improvement to how people interact with the services of the State.”

The report can be accessed here.

ENDS

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Committee Membership

Chairman: Pádraig MacLochlainn, Sinn Féin

Deputies:

Richard Boyd-Barrett, Independent
Paul J Connaughton, Fine Gael
Pat Deering, Fine Gael
Michael Healy-Rae, Independent
Seamus Kirk, Fianna Fáil
Michael P. Kitt, Fianna Fáil
Mary Mitchell O’Connor, Fine Gael
Michelle Mulherin, Fine Gael
Derek Nolan (Vice-Chair), Labour
Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Sinn Féin
Sean Kenny, Labour
Anthony Lawlor, Fine Gael
John Halligan, Independent
Jack Wall, Labour

Senators:

Trevor Ó Clochartaigh, Sinn Féin
Tony Mulcahy, Fine Gael
Susan O’Keeffe, Labour
Ned O'Sullivan, Fianna Fáil