Mr. Ger Deering:

We undertook a strategic and operational review in 2015. We consulted with the people who had used and had taken complaints through the service. I think more than 400 people were engaged in that survey. We consulted with representatives of consumer groups and of industry. Every one of them came back and said we needed a simpler, faster, more effective and efficient way of dealing with complaints. For a whole variety of reasons the process had become very legalistic and very burdensome and it really was not accessible. Interestingly, it is very early days yet but in a survey we did recently of people who had brought complaints through the office during the first six months, they were asked what word they would associate with the service. We were very pleased that the top word which came back was "accessible" because that was the problem that we had.

We acknowledge that the office had developed in a way that was not as friendly to complainants. As I mentioned at the outset, the role of an ombudsman is to level the playing pitch and to reinstate an equality of arms between the complainant and the provider, and if the system is very legalistic and heavy that does not suit the consumer in the vast majority of cases.