Mr. Tony McCourt:

The position with regard to the exclusions is there are matters about which a member of the forces is entitled to submit an application or complaint under the redress of wrong system. It can be processed all the way up to the Chief of Staff and if the complainant does not get satisfaction there, he or she is perfectly entitled to ask to have it referred to the ombudsman. The first thing the ombudsman must do is to consider whether it is within his or her jurisdiction and sometimes it arises that it actually is outside my jurisdiction because it is excluded by the provisions of section 5 of the Act. I believe that if we have a complaint system that has been in place since 1922 and that if a provision for an ombudsman to be inserted between the Chief of Staff's decision and the Minister's final decision was introduced almost nine years ago, there should be the minimum of restrictions on the powers and jurisdictions of the ombudsman to deal with such complaints. Moreover, I believe that complainants may be dissatisfied, having processed a complaint all the way up to the ombudsman's office, to find that the ombudsman is not empowered to deal with it. There may be reasons he or she is not allowed to so do that are valid under the provisions of section 5 of the Act but sometimes - I refer to matters that can be perceived clearly to be administrative in nature - there should be scope for those to be dealt with, even in the areas that are excluded from the jurisdiction of the ombudsman.