Mr. Peter Tyndall:

Several points can be made on this subject. My recollection of the TG4 case is that it did not take longer because it was in Irish. I have an concern about the length of time it is taking us to deal with cases in general. I spoke about the reader issue for the leaving certificate and our capacity to fast track cases. The reality is that at one point the office was 16% down on its staffing. One should also have regard for the work of the Information Commissioner. There are different teams in the office. The impact of that was producing unacceptable delays.

Wearing my Information Commissioner hat, I have given a commitment that no case will be more than one year old at the end of this year. I cannot give that commitment on the Ombudsman side because there is a backlog of over 100 cases. Some of those are in groups and a number of them will be resolved at once but the reality is that the volume of work was overcoming the capacity of the office to deal with it. That is a matter of deep concern for me. It is something I have addressed in previous positions and I am working with colleagues on dealing with the historical backlog. It is not acceptable but it is understandable. It has been there for some time. It is difficult to work without sufficient resources, as members will understand. I have to make sure that I have enough people who can do the job properly.

The Ombudsman's office changed its procedures substantially three years ago to make it more efficient. The backlog has decreased notably since then. The question arises of whether we can squeeze further efficiencies. The problem that always arises with an Ombudsman office is that we have to be careful in turning cases over quickly that we continue to do our job to the level of quality required and that we are not turning away cases we ought to be investigating more thoroughly. We are conducting a process review to see if there is any way to achieve this objective, such as through further automation. It is, therefore, not so much a question of working as Gaeilge as that the average length of time we take to deal with complaints has to be reduced. That is a hard nut to crack.