Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 10 October 2012
39. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the reason for his decision to exclude an additional 50 agencies from the Ombudsman’s remit despite his Programme for Government commitment to ensure that all statutory bodies and all bodies significantly funded from the public purse will be covered by the legislation. [43491/12]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe main purpose of the Ombudsman Amendment Bill is to extend the remit of the Ombudsman to an additional 140 bodies. As the Deputy will be aware there are a number of specific categories of public bodies which are of longstanding exclusion from the Ombudsman's jurisdiction on account of the specific characteristics of the bodies within these categories and the assessment following consultation with the Ombudsman that they do not warrant inclusion under the Act. The general principle that has guided this assessment is whether the individual citizen's interest is served from inclusion of the public body or otherwise. In particular, it has been a priority to ensure that as much as possible public bodies who in their day-to-day activities and administration have significant engagement and interaction with large numbers of citizens and have the potential through their administration and decision-making to give rise to an adverse effect for individual citizens are included. Consequently in general public bodies within the following categories of public body will remain exempt from review:-
- commercial State bodies,
- economic sectoral regulators
- bodies involved in the criminal justice and legal system
- research and advisory bodies with little or no interface with the general public.
In addition, while it has not proved possible in the time available to carry out a detailed comparison of the public bodies currently exempted from review by the Ombudsman and those largely drawn from the above categories which it is now proposed to exempt.
This reflects the process carried out by my Department with other Departments and in consultation with the Office of the Ombudsman to seek to ensure that all public bodies are listed either as reviewable or exempt agencies under the Bill, given that previously a significant number of public bodies were neither. As I indicated in the course of the Committee Stage debate on this Bill in the Seanad the process will secure the extension of the Ombudsman's power to review administrative decision-making to 140 public bodies which are currently excluded. Following the enactment of the Bill the Ombudsman will have the legal authority to carry out administrative review on well over 300 public bodies.
