Mr. Peter Tyndall:

The difficulty in benchmarking across ombudsman schemes is that everyone has a different jurisdiction and works against different legislation. In general, because an ombudsman is the final court of appeal, so to speak, for the administrative complaints process, one would expect a significant number of complaints not to be upheld.

In general, our figures in Ireland have been broadly similar to those for public service ombudsmen elsewhere when we have benchmarked against them. We tend to have higher uphold rates with private ombudsmen schemes because many commercial bodies will take a view that it is cheaper to say “No” and hope a proportion of complainants do not go to the ombudsman. Our uphold rate is on a par with most of the other public service ombudsmen with which we have compared our figures.

The reason not to uphold is often the constraints of particular legislation. If a Senator or Deputy takes a view that something is unjust but the way to change it would be to change the legislation, I would comment if I think the legislation is producing unjust outcomes and make it known to the relevant Department. On other occasions, changes are made at short notice, for example, changes to legislation governing agricultural compensation schemes. In such a case, when the Department implements the changes, while many farmers may feel they have been unjustly treated, it may be the effect of the legislation rather than anything administrative that happened.

In the past, I have advertised as an Ombudsman on the backs of buses. It can be done and nothing prevents advertising. I have taken the view that the most effective way of getting the message across is to take the opportunities presented by reports and we find, for instance, that when a report is published, as with A Good Death, and there is publicity about the Office of the Ombudsman, which we take advantage of, we see an increase in the number of complaints. With no particular trends, there has been a substantial increase in the number of complaints in the current year. There was considerable publicity associated with the annual report and A Good Death, which has helped get the message across to the public that they can complain. Senator and Deputies are also active in encouraging people to complain when they receive requests from constituents, and this is helpful.