Mr. Peter Tyndall:

-----instead of picking them off one at a time. It is very welcome when we get the extensions. We got the extensions to the 200 bodies in the 2012 Act. We got the extension now to nursing homes but, ultimately, we have to ask if we should turn it on its head and say that the whole of the public service is within the remit unless there are specific reasons to do otherwise. For instance, the Children's Ombudsman might have a remit in some areas rather than my office, which is fine.

As well as the ones the Senator mentioned, the one to highlight is the issue around clinical judgment. Many complaints come to my office that we cannot deal with. People say there is the fitness to practice process, the Medical Council, but we get the type of complaints where somebody says, "I was not given the correct prioritisation on a waiting list and I had to wait much longer for treatment than I should have done." That is a clinical judgment. It has no impact on the ability of the doctor making that judgment to practice. It is not a matter for the Medical Council. It should never have been excluded, and it needs to be addressed. I have had a positive and constructive meeting with the Minister for Health, and I have had similar meetings with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform but, hopefully, we can wrap up some of these issues now and address them.

I have a meeting coming up with the Department of Justice and Equality to discuss the implications of a potential extension of remit. I will raise the issue of the new arrangements at that point because as the Senator implied, it seems that the correct time to put a correct mechanism in place is before it is needed rather than after the event. Surely there should be recourse to the Ombudsman under those circumstances. All I can say is that, inevitably, much of the workload of my colleagues in southern Europe, for instance, the countries bordering the Balkans, Austria and so on is taken up with these issues because those are the pressing issues of the day and it seems odd that my office should be excluded from what is mainstream work for most Ombudsmen. That is a general point I would make.

I am missing something but the Senator can remind me in a moment. In resource terms, the issue for us is that we are to the pin of our collar, as they say. For instance, when we lost skilled, experienced people through retirement and it took several months to fill their posts, work piled up; we have no head room. When we have taken on new areas of work we have generally had additional resources to deal with that. Principally, that has been not on the Ombudsman side, but the workforce stretches across all the offices. The Standards in Public Office Commission, for instance, had additional staffing to deal with the lobbying. We had additional staffing on the Information Commissioner's side to deal with the implications of the 2014 Act, and we had assistance when the 2012 Act was introduced. We are monitoring the situation carefully with nursing homes. An 11% increase in work is a substantial increase.

We have done a lot to streamline our systems. As the Senator knows, a major effort was made under my predecessor. I have introduced some further streamlining, and that is helping us to manage but, to be honest, it would not take much to push us over the edge.

The backlog that had built up has been reducing steadily; we have halved it in the past 12 months or so.