Mr. Peter Tyndall:

I was asked for an example of improvement. One of the issues we had many complaints about was neighbour nuisance in housing provided by housing associations or local authorities where the landlords would not take action. We had a series of high profile cases but we were concerned that we were continuing to see the same cases reappearing and, therefore, we worked carefully with the local authorities in areas in which we were having the biggest problems. Some of them restructured their departments to change the way they dealt with the issue. We felt they needed to take early, prompt action because once matters had been allowed to deteriorate, it was always difficult to recover and they needed to use all the legal powers available to them and to engage with other bodies such as the police. That led to a major reduction in complaints in this area to my office. That reflects a genuine improvement in the way bodies deal with neighbour nuisance. That is a practical example and I could give others.

I refer to the issue of extending freedom of information legislation to financial bodies. That is within the political domain at the moment and I need to reflect on that in answering the question but the extension of the legislation into the financial sector has to be a welcome development. It will be important to see how that works over time and whether further extension is desirable. I can well understand the importance of the issue for individuals who feel let down.

Public confidence in services is always higher if it is seen that there are ways of holding them to account and that is a vital role of the office.

I was asked about the difference in cases between Ireland and Wales. There are fewer differences than one might think. There are differences in jurisdiction but fundamentally complaints to ombudsmen tend to be at their core about somebody not receiving something to which they were entitled or complaints that what happened was not fair and complainants were not dealt with properly and, though the subject matter can change, the fundamentals of investigating the complaint is often at its heart similar. The reality is there are differences in jurisdiction as some of the subject matters are different but although I was not information commissioner, I am familiar with the FOI regime. Clearly, that is different but I will have a capable and knowledgeable staff and I will work closely with them to make sure I am fully across the issues in Ireland as well as in Wales.

The issues of the parliamentary Whip and Parliament holding Executive to account arise in many legislatures throughout the world. Ultimately it is not one an Ombudsman can solve; it is parliamentarians who must solve it. Committees such as this and the House in plenary must deal with these issues for themselves. An Ombudsman cannot regulate the operation of the Oireachtas.

I am used to seeing freedom of information and data protection legislation alongside each other operating as a single system. It is very different in Ireland. I was not aware of concerns of the type expressed about the data protection regime and I must confess I concentrated most of my efforts on understanding the freedom of information regime. I will certainly take it away and think about it.