Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I am thinking about it. I try to answer everything put to me. It tends to be difficult to put it in the context of this or that Department. The Revenue Commissioners can be remarkably good to deal with and have certainly upped their game with regard to their processes in the past number of years. Due to the way the Department of Justice and Equality is set up in respect of the protections it is afforded regarding its records under FOI and the fact that key areas are outside the remit of the Ombudsman, that Department tends not to give as many records out simply because it is not legally obliged to do so. I do not like to keep harping on about it but there is a culture within that Department going back through the history of the State. Perhaps the Department finds it hard to trust in bodies outside its own culture to make what it would see as the right decisions because we might not be aware of this or that factor. Obviously, I do not agree with that.

We have quite significant issues with the Department of Health concerning the seeking of records and we have ongoing discussions with it. When it claims that a matter is outside my remit, we try to rebut that but it can be very difficult. The culture in that Department stems from the pressures it is under, the fact that it is continually fighting on so many fronts and the fact that the health service is formed in a particular way but changes a few years later so the personnel change and so on. It is like trying to grab on to a moving object. It never stands still.

In respect of culture, the Departments of Justice and Equality and Health might be the most difficult to deal with. Most Departments do their best. There are two different cultures at play. There is the political culture and the culture of the administration of the Civil Service. When I reference the fact that 11 of the 15 reports that are here predate this current Administration, I cannot say whether the Administration and administrators still hold to this and are now out of kilter with politicians or whether if they were to do them again, they would have a different view because there is a different political culture.