I move:
That Dáil Éireann recommends Mr. Kevin Murphy for appointment by the President to be the Ombudsman.
I am very pleased to move this motion recommending that the President should appoint Mr. Kevin Murphy to succeed Mr. Michael Mills in the position of Ombudsman. Under the terms of the Ombudsman Act, 1980, Mr. Mills will vacate the office on reaching retirement age at the end of next October.
The House will be aware that the Ombudsman Act provides that the Ombudsman is to be appointed by the president upon resolution passed by the Dáil and Seanad recommending the appointment of the person concerned. The term of office is specified in that Act as six years.
I feel sure that I speak for every Member of this House when I say that this country owes Mr. Mills a debt of gratitude for the service which he has rendered during his two terms of office as Ombudsman. It should be remembered that he was our first Ombudsman and to him fell the onerous task of setting up the office, of making its presence and purpose known to the public and of establishing trust and confidence with a public service which was occasionally — during the initial years at any rate — somewhat suspicious of this new creation. In this way he successfully counterbalanced any popular perception that the Ombudsman was there simply to attack the public service. Finally, and most importantly, Mr. Mills established the office as offering an easy and effective form of redress to those citizens who felt that they had been short-changed in their dealings with the public service.
Mr. Mills rose to these tasks with a determination and enthusiasm to vindicate the rights of the citizen in his or her dealings with the institutions of Government which, allied to a sense of fair play, ensured that the Office of the Ombudsman rapidly became a vital and respected element of our system of public administration. His achievement has been reflected in the genuine tributes which have been paid to him from all sides of this House and of Seanad Éireann on the various occasions when his annual report or other matters pertaining to his office have been discussed in the Oireachtas.
A revealing index of Michael Mills' success has been the volume of cases which he and his staff have processed since he first took office. An examination of the annual reports of the Ombudsman from the first in 1984 up to the most recently published one in 1992 reveals that some 30,000 complaints were processed and that, of these, some 20 per cent were resolved in favour of the complainant, while a further 26 per cent received assistance in one way or another by, for example, directing complainants to other benefits, other schemes or other courses of action which could afford a resolution to their problems.
These statistics are a monument to a truly remarkable achievement. I know that all Members of this House will wish to join me in expressing our sincere appreciation for his contribution to our country and in wishing him a very long and happy life after he vacates the position of Ombudsman.
Mr. Michael Mills set a remarkably high standard of achievement and the Government was determined that, in recommending a successor for the position of Ombudsman, the chosen individual would be somebody who could emulate and, indeed, build upon these achievements. When we approached Mr. Kevin Murphy and requested him to allow his name to be recommended for the position of Ombudsman, we felt sure that we had identified somebody with the ideal profile for the position. We are appreciative of the fact that he responded positively to our approach.
It is appropriate to say something at this stage about the thinking which informed the Government's decision to approach Mr. Murphy. We had in mind the way in which we wish to see the public service develop and the complementary role which a strong and committed Ombudsman could play in this process.
A major element of the Government's approach is the perceived need to develop and strengthen the customer relations culture in the public service. When recently launching an initiative to develop strategic management in the Irish public service, the Taoiseach highlighted a number of specific ways in which customer service must be improved — for example, by making services accessible to the users, by making systems and procedures as simple and straightforward as possible, by ensuring that official forms are fully comprehensible and by reducing the number of official forms.
We are blessed with a public administration which is rich in talent and commitment, possesses a remarkable degree of professional integrity and is immersed in the public service ethic. I know from personal experience that nobody is more aware than our public servants themselves of the need to change and adapt in the face of the rapidly accelerating rate at which society and social expectations are developing here. If change is to be successfully implemented, public servants must have a sense of being involved. Change cannot be imposed from outside. I am confident that there is huge commitment to, and enthusiasm for, change among our senior public service managers.
Of course, we have had reforms and attempted reforms of public administration in the past — some were largely ignored, while others were implemented in part. What I feel sets the current initiative apart is the degree to which the purpose of public service is highlighted. There is clear focus on the ends to be achieved — the identification of the real needs of our citizens and the delivery of appropriate services to those citizens.
The Ombudsman operates within an independent legislative framework. Nonetheless, the Government considers that there is a significant parallel between his statutory role and the initiative announced by the Taoiseach. This is seen most clearly in the shared commitment to championing the rights of the citizen in his or her dealings with the bureaucracy.
The impact which an effective Ombudsman can make in defending citizens' rights can be seen most strikingly in those cases, which appear again and again in the annual reports, where he precipitated change which reverberated far beyond the individual case. One thinks of such initiatives as the many procedural improvements, the reforms of anomalies, both legal and otherwise, the encouragement of public officials to adopt a more sympathetic approach to the predicament of their client, each one an initiative which made life much easier for so many of our citizens who had business to transact with Government Departments or other public agencies.
In Mr. Kevin Murphy we believe that we have somebody who as Ombudsman could move forward the process of championing the cause of the individual citizens in their dealings with public agencies. He is one of our most gifted public servants. Indeed, on many occasions I have been the beneficiary of his valuable advice, and advice based on a wide experience of public administration at the most senior level, advice always given frankly and objectively.
I would like to say something about those aspects of Mr. Murphy's background and experience which persuaded the Government of his particular suitability for the position of Ombudsman. His senior management postings have involved him in an extensive range of dealing with people outside as well as within the public service. For many years he was a member of the Employer Labour Conference. More recently he has played a leading role in negotiating the Programme for National Recovery, the Programme for Economic and Social Progress and the recent Programme for Competitiveness and Work. The skills which Mr. Kevin Murphy displayed in leading those negotiations included patience, judgment, intellectual and physical stamina and a creative approach to problem solving.
In addition to these qualities, he possesses another and in my view vital attribute: the ability to maintain good relations with, and retain the trust of, all sides, without compromising his own position. This is a quality which I have so often seen him display even when negotiations ran into stormy waters.
I note with regret that the Government's announcement of its intention to nominate Mr. Murphy drew a knee jerk reaction from some who contended that a public servant was by definition unsuitable for this appointment or that this particular nomination would in some way diminish the independence of the Ombudsman. These are views to which I do not subscribe and which have no basis in reality.
Neither I nor the Government see this appointment as indicating in any way that civil servants should in the future monopolise or have any prior claim on this particular office. The range of backgrounds from which Ombudsmen in other jurisdictions have been drawn is wide and includes, in many instances, public service backgrounds. This diversity, I think, reflects the needs of the institution at different stages. Our first Ombudsman had to face the task of gaining acceptance for his office from parliamentarians and making potential clients aware of its existence and utility to them. His unique familiarity with Deputies of all parties, who could well have seen the Ombudsman as competing with their own grievance resolution role, and his journalistic experience contributed in no small way to the successful accomplishment of these talks.
At all times the essential task of the Ombudsman will be to bring justice and compassion to bear on the situations where the law, or the application of the law, does not provide them. Investigation and resolution of individual grievances must always be his or her prime function. In that regard, I am aware that Mr. Murphy's trade union colleagues on the other side of the table always have viewed him as a tough and principal negotiator on macro issues of pay and conditions but as an accessible and sympathetic listener on individual cases involving grievances or inequities.
However, there are other aspects to an Ombudsman's role besides individual grievances once the institution has secured acceptance as part of the administrative landscape. For instance there is a need to assess independently, and provide feedback on, organisational deficiencies which give rise to individual grievances. We have put in place mechanisms to review from the "value of money" point of view the operation of public service organisations and to improve their managerial efficiency. The office of Ombudsman, at this stage of its development, has reached the point where we would be justified in looking to it to provide an institutional audit of such organisations from the point of view of the client. This particular task would be facilitated by the appointment as Ombudsman of someone whose background gives a ready familiarity with the organisational and procedural functions of the public service.
There are other prospective developments which reinforce that view. This Government set out in its Programme for a Partnership Government an agenda for change aimed at broadening, or as I would prefer, deepening our democracy. Our proposals in relation to such matters as ethics in public office, electoral reform and freedom of information are at an advanced stage and some will be brought before this House shortly. In many of these areas, there will be a need for mechanisms to resolve disputes which have a public interest dimension or which arise between individual citizens and State interests. The outgoing Ombudsman has already highlighted the similarity between the adjudicatory tasks involved and the current functions of his office. This is something which the Government will take into account in its consideration of these matters.
I consider that it is Mr. Murphy's background which especially fits him for the position of Ombudsman. He has a thorough grasp of the realities of public service here. His high level management experience in the Civil Service would afford him a particularly valuable point from which to distinguish between those cases where legal or other legitimate circumstances preclude a certain course of action as opposed to those where dubious administrative practice is the main obstacle.
Mr. Murphy had the unusual experience for a civil servant of competing successfully in a public competition for a senior management position of Deputy Secretary in the Department of the Public Service, a Department where he was soon to rise to the rank of Secretary. When that Department merged with the Department of Finance in 1987 he formed part of the top management team in that Department. The positions which he has held in both Departments involved him in regular high level contacts with management in all Government Departments and with bodies in the wider public service as well. They also required him on numerous occasions to take, and stand over, difficult decisions, decisions which would on occasions have been unpopular with his public service colleagues in other Departments and agencies.
As Minister for Finance, I am conscious of Mr. Kevin Murphy's particular aptitude for innovative and progressive thought on all matters relating to the reshaping of the public service. I know that the many Members of this House who like to keep abreast of the latest thinking in public administration will be aware of Mr. Murphy's reputation in this regard, based on his many public and published addresses. Lest any cynics present might view these plaudits as the biased view of a Minister for one of his senior mandarins. I should like to quote the words of Senator Professor Jospeh Lee, one of the most trenchant critics of shortcomings in the Civil Service. In his book, Ireland 1912-1985 about Mr. Kevin Murphy's contributions to one particular debate:
Kevin Murphy ... committed himself to a courageous public statement on the possibilities for improved productivity in the civil service. Few senior decision-makers in other institutions, whether in the public or private sector, would comment as candidly or as intelligently on the difficulties they faced.
I have the utmost confidence that Mr. Murphy will make a remarkable contribution to this country if appointed as Ombudsman. Therefore, I have no hesitation in commending this motion to the House.
