Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms O'Reilly to this meeting. I listened very attentively to her opening remarks and noted with interest her contention that transparency helps to ensure public trust and reinforces the legitimacy of decision-making processes and that any sign of facts being hidden provokes not just distrust but also increased mental stress and mental health issues. She said that EU citizens need to know the extent to which their own governments were involved in the contracts and so on. She mentioned that there are lots of people out there who are very sceptical about the vaccines and that it is important to get those people on board. I was extremely impressed by the honesty of Ms O'Reilly's report and very interested to hear that the ombudsman's office does not have any real competence in the area of EU health policy, which strikes me as strange. If the EU is supposed to work for the good of all of its members, that should include their financial, mental and physical good.

Deputy Murphy referred to the EMA and possible investigations by the ombudsman's office. Let us say the ombudsman conducts an investigation and issues a final report, including recommendations. Have such reports or recommendations ever been challenged by any EU member state? Has anybody ever questioned the recommendations of the European Ombudsman's office? Has anyone ever asked whether it would be prudent to go that way or suggested that her office should stay away from an issue because of possible implications by way of court cases and so forth? Does the ombudsman ever feel compromised when she issues her reports? She spoke earlier about investigations that her office has conducted pretty rapidly, considering Covid has only been with us for 12 to 18 months. Has she ever been challenged in terms of the EU not doing something on foot of her findings or recommendations or choosing to ignore them?