Mr. Justice Alan Mahon:

I suggested two years. Alternatively, one could give the ombudsman some discretion. There are cases in which people, for very understandable reasons, did not make the cut-off period. That was one suggestion. The second was that the ombudsman be legally entitled to conduct what are often referred to as "own motion inquiries". At the moment, given the way in which the legislation is framed, I can only conduct an inquiry based on a particular complaint from an individual, whereas an own motion inquiry would allow the ombudsman, having identified a particular subject that may be a theme running through different complaints, to pursue that. One example might be in areas of gender. I dealt with a couple of cases in relation to issues arising while female members of the Defence Forces were on maternity leave and so on. That is a power the national Ombudsman has as does, I think, the Ombudsman for Children, as do the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland and the Welsh ombudsman. In recent years, legislation in different countries has included this own motion entitlement. That would be very valuable, particularly when you look at all that went on that gave rise to the independent review group, IRG, report. There were issues in that case that may have been picked up and inquired into as an own motion inquiry. In relation to that, late last year, at the request of the Secretary General of the Department of Defence, I conducted a sort of peer review. I examined military ombudsmen's entitlement to conduct own motion inquiries in different countries like Canada, Australia and so on, which I submitted to the Department late last year. I assume it is continuing to consider that.

As for the third area, our legislation lists, in section 4 I think, the categories of complaint I can investigate as ombudsman; there are about eight. My suggestion was that, while it does not exclude inappropriate behaviour or bullying, for example, neither does it specifically mention those in a way which might make it obvious to a lot of would-be complainants that we can deal with those sorts of complaints. It was to make it clear that, if there was going to be new legislation, a few categories could be added, using words like "interpersonal behaviour", "inappropriate behaviour" and "sexual misbehaviour", for example.