Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the European Ombudsman for being here with us. I apologise, as I missed her opening statement. I am on the governing authority of UCD and attended a meeting of that authority this morning. I have come straight here but I read Ms O'Reilly's statement in advance. I apologise in case I am overlapping with any of the other questions she has already covered off.

On the European Ombudsman’s statement, she speaks about a list of practical recommendations for all institutions on how to record work-related instances of text messages. Could she explain that a little bit to me, as well as if she has any initial feedback as to whether those recommendations have been acted on and on how other institutions could learn from them? I am particularly interested in hearing of her experience and of transporting it back into Ireland to see how learnings from how her office runs could help improve our systems here rather than reinventing the wheel. I also would be interested to hear of new recommendations, processes or procedures with regard to investigations she has implemented in the past number of years from which she believes other ombudsman offices would benefit.

She has given our committee some interesting statistics on inquiries which have been conducted and closed. I would be keen to learn how quickly queries are resolved and whether there is a service level agreement, SLA. While it obviously would depend on the complexity of the inquiry,I would be keen to learn how they are graded and dealt with. What are the practicalities of the European Ombudsman’s office on learnings it has or things that work well in her realm from which we also could learn here in Ireland?