Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Today we are meeting with Ms Emily O'Reilly, European Ombudsman, on her annual report for 2021 and and other related matters.

I wish to explain to witnesses some limitations to parliamentary privilege, and the practices of the Houses with regard to references they may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present, or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts, is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. Witnesses are again reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name, or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity.

Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks, and it is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Before we hear from our witnesses, I propose that we publish the opening statement on the committee’s website. Is that agreed? Agreed. On behalf of the committee, I extend a warm welcome to Ms O'Reilly, European Ombudsman. She will make an opening statement, for which she will have ten minutes. We will then have questions and comments from members, who will be confined to ten-minute slots, which will allow members to come in a second time.

I invite Ms O'Reilly to make her opening statement.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

It is a great pleasure to speak to the committee about my annual report, work that we have done on the transparency of environmental decision making and more general issues around my work.

The complaints we deal with and investigations we open span a very wide range of subjects from freedom of information requests; concerns around inappropriate or opaque lobbying; the protection of fundamental rights by EU agencies involved in asylum and migration issues; revolving doors; staff complaints; and more general concerns around EU administration. Through my work, I try to ensure the highest standards in ethics and accountability in the EU administration. The EU’s capacity to exert positive global influence as the world continues to face so many crises, from financial to those linked to the climate crisis, is maximised only when it is seen to act in an ethical and accountable way.

Earlier this week I listened to a discussion about the continuing fallout from the US-led invasion of Iraq 20 years ago and was struck by the words of one contributor who noted that moral authority is necessary for political legitimacy. Recent months have been dominated by the fallout from what is known as "Qatargate", that is, serious allegations of foreign governments buying and attempting to buy influence in the European Parliament. The scandal exposed a porous ethical framework, which bad actors could and can exploit. The vast majority of MEPs are conscientious and act in the public interest, but lax ethics rules empower those who choose to act corruptly.

The Parliament has begun the process of reforming its internal ethics rules and earlier this week my office wrote to European Parliament President, Roberta Metsola, outlining our own thoughts as to what needs to be considered to produce rules that will withstand both internal and external scrutiny.

In 2021, we opened 338 inquiries, that is, investigations of complaints, but we also have own-initiative investigations in matters of public interest and, once again, transparency-related issues accounted for the largest proportion of them including the relatively new question of work-related text messages. While freedom of information, FOI, requests concerning instant messages are already part of the Irish landscape, the same cannot be said of the EU administration. A journalist, for example, turned to my office after the Commission refused to give access to text messages sent between its President and the CEO of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company concerning the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines. The EU’s access to documents or FOI law clearly states that it is the content and not the medium that counts when it comes to considering what constitutes an EU document or record. However, my inquiry showed that the Commission does not consider text messages to be documents and, therefore, does not record them. I found maladministration in that case on the grounds that what the Commission described as shortlived messages do indeed constitute documents under the relevant legislation if they contain information around EU decision making.

The Commission has since engaged positively with us in relation to dealing with the wider matter of the registration of such messages. On the more specific matter, The New York Timesrecently announced that it has taken a case to the European Court of Justice, ECJ, in relation to the refusal of the Commission to release the Von der Leyen-Pfizer messages. I have since drawn up a list of practical recommendations for all institutions on how to record work-related instant and text messages. The aim is to ensure a comprehensive historical record of EU decision making.

In addition to complaint-based inquiries, I use my strategic powers to bring attention to systemic issues in the EU administration from accountability in decision making, to making sure lobbying is transparent and ensuring ethics rules are upheld. Last year, I focused on revolving doors, an issue that is becoming increasingly problematic in Brussels. I launched a broad inquiry into how the Commission handles moves by staff to the private sector. I found that it is not using the full potential of the rules, which include temporarily forbidding people from taking new posts, to protect the integrity of the administration. It is important to consider what it means when people with regulatory expertise move to the private sector, bringing their knowledge and contacts with them. In my view, the potentially corrosive effect of revolving doors is generally underestimated across EU institutions with a failure to see it, in some cases, for what it really is, that is, the buying and selling of influence.

Recent inquiries of mine found important weaknesses in how the European Banking Authority, the European Investment Bank and the European Defence Agency manage the issues. In all three cases, senior personnel had been allowed to move to private sector interests that were heavily vested in regulatory and other decision-making areas of the institutions the personnel had left. This is a matter I will continue to monitor closely.

My office works to improve the accountability and transparency of the EU administration to the benefit of everyone, even if they never come into direct contact with the EU institutions. This is characterised as sustaining impact in our office’s strategic roadmap for the coming years. We try to stay relevant and achieve long-lasting impact by continually scanning the horizon to see where our work could be of use. That was the context in which, as I mentioned earlier, I wrote to the European Parliament with suggestions about how its proposed internal ethics reforms could be further strengthened. Earlier this month, I also wrote to the European Commission to ask for more details on how it deals with requests for business trips by its senior staff members that are paid for by third parties. This arose from reports that a senior member of a directorate-general, DG, or department, dealing with aviation issues, had accepted free flights to and hospitality in Qatar while his DG was negotiating Qatari rights to EU airspace.

Recent inquiries and initiatives have also looked at the transparency of EU decision making on Russian sanctions, how human rights standards are incorporated into the trade deals the EU signs and the impact of artificial intelligence on the EU administration. Lately, I have also started looking at the transparency of decision making around the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the multi-billion euro fund, which aims to help the EU economy recover from the effects of Covid-19 in an environmentally sustainable manner. People have a right to know what projects have been chosen for funding and whether the agreed milestones have been achieved. Ireland, for example, is to receive around €989 million in grants. Around 42% of the plan should support climate investments. Should people be able to easily find out how progress is being made on these spending goals? The answer is clearly "Yes", but so far this has not been fully reflected in the Commission’s approach to the matter. Several national recovery plans have all been subject to FOI requests that have since landed on my desk because the complainants are dissatisfied with the amount of information they have received.

The transparency of environmental decisions makes up an increasing number of the complaints I receive each year. Despite the importance of the issue, and the fact that the EU has signed up to rules that require a high level of public access to environmental information, people often feel they do not know how or why decisions have been taken, whether they concern pesticides, are projects funded by the European Investment Bank or involve the proper implementation of sustainability checks. This has led me to prioritise scrutiny in this area. Last autumn, I launched a public consultation to find out whether citizens have access to up-to-date information on environmental decision making. Questions included how easy it is for the public to obtain documents or information related to the environment, and how citizens could be more involved in the preparation and implementation of green policies. The answers to the consultation - which we are currently analysing - will help me advise the EU administration and, perhaps, prompt new inquiries. On such vital issues, it is important that people can exercise their right to democratic scrutiny and I shall continue to work towards making this a reality.

I will finish by highlighting a very positive step relating to my office. Thanks in large part to the European Parliament Committee on Petitions, the European Ombudsman’s statute was strengthened in 2021. This sent a positive message about the role of the European Ombudsman in overseeing the EU administration but also more generally about the importance of strong, independent oversight bodies at all levels of public administration. I thank committee members for their attention and I am happy to answer any questions they may have.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I have one or two questions after which I will let other members come in. Will Ms O'Reilly explain to the committee and to the public what happened with Qatargate? In her opening statement, she referred to the exploitation of the European Parliament by "bad actors". Qatargate is a case in point. How poor is the ethical framework that exists, which can be exploited by those bad actors?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

When Qatargate happened there were many elements involved in it. Of course, the Belgian authorities are still looking into it, as the committee will know. I think it will be a pretty long process. Basically, it was found that a number of European Parliament personnel, including a former MEP, a serving MEP and an assistant, had been involved in what looked like an attempt by the Qatari and other governments to influence the European Parliament in respect of certain matters favourable to Qatar and other countries. Obviously, there was a lot of shock at this because those members who will have seen pictures of it will have seen literal bags of cash and suitcases, which gave a very graphic image of what appeared to be corruption.

Immediately, as soon as that happened, the European Parliament started examining its own rules to see whether its ethical rules were strong enough to withstand this, what was described by President Metsola, attack on European democracy. A number of the findings related to cooling-off periods for MEPs, the easy way in which MEPs can lobby their former colleagues once they have left Parliament and the ways in which informal friendship groups can be set up by MEPs who start liaising with countries outside the bloc on a friendship basis. That is very positive but can lead to perhaps inappropriate influencing of the EU by those countries, and the MEPs are sort of dragged into that, whether willingly or otherwise. It is not something that is controlled by the European Parliament itself. When such groups go abroad they do not really have the imprimatur of the European Parliament, but many countries that are looking for the approval of the EU or that want to burnish their credentials can say, "Look: we have been visited by a delegation from the European Parliament, and that is good for our image."

The findings also related not only to the transparency of the work MEPs do but also to the fact that the committee that looks into breaches of the rules is not terribly independent. It is made up of six MEPs from the different groupings. It cannot independently investigate anything. It has to be asked by the Parliament - indeed, by the Parliament President - to investigate something. Then, while they can make a recommendation if a breach of the rules has been found to have happened, those recommendations are generally not made public, and then it is up to the President as to whether or not she accepts them. These were some of the areas that were felt to be leading to a weakening of the structure that should support the ethical framework of the Parliament. Now President Metsola has made a series of, I think, 14 different proposals but, of course, they have to be agreed to by all the groups. At the start of this drama there was a great rush to implement or to support these rules, but now that the drama has died down a little, splits are emerging between the groups as to how far they want to go. It is sort of a work in progress.

The Parliament knows very well that this has been damaging not just to the image of the Parliament but to the image of the EU itself because, as the committee will know, not everybody distinguishes between the Parliament, the Commission, the Council and the various other institutions. It is also noteworthy that this story was a global story. It was covered not just in Brussels or the EU but all over the world. That is a testament to or shows just how powerful the Parliament is and that what it does as co-legislator with the Council has an enormous impact not just within the EU but globally. Therefore, when a scandal like this emerges, it will get global notice and, therefore, the EU knows that it has to rebuild its image and rebuild the trust of its citizens in the Parliament by implementing rules that people see are solid and will do the job.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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What remedies has your office available to it at present, Ms O'Reilly? You spoke about 14 different rules or regulations coming through. Would you be happy that that would cut out the incidents of corruption we have seen, or is there something else that you, as ombudsman, would wish to see in there, besides or in place of the 14 regulations you have mentioned?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

It is a good question. I think the test has to be whether the rules work, but what makes them work? I think what makes any sort of ethical framework work is that the people who are charged with monitoring and implementing it can work independently. At the moment I do not really think that is the case within the Parliament because it is comprised totally of MEPs. They cannot act independently. For example, if they get a tip-off or a complaint or read something in the media about something - for example, an MEP alleged to have broken a particular rule - they cannot of their own volition decide to investigate it. They have to wait.

As for sanctions, when people look back at whatever sanctions have been applied to MEPs who have been deemed to break some of the rules, it has happened very rarely. One interesting thing is that one of the issues was around the fact that many MEPs' flights to third countries are paid for by those third countries. At the moment the rules do not forbid that, but the flights have to be declared. One newspaper did a survey looking at January to November of last year and the declarations that were made in respect of flights paid for by third countries, and there was more or less a flat line. Then you come to December - Qatargate happened in early December - and the line just jumps because suddenly there was a vast piling in of people to declare the trips they had made that they had not declared before. That suggests that the implementation of the rules is lax and that people think, "If I do not register this meeting, this gift or these flights, nothing much will happen." That is another problem. For any body to work well - let us take the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPOC, in Ireland - it has to act independently, it has to be able to investigate on its own initiative and it has to have access to whatever it needs to have access to. Then it can make recommendations or take whatever actions it chooses to take. If, however, it does not have that, no matter what it is called it will be a weak body and will not be able to enforce adequately the rules that are there. No matter how great the rules sound, if they are not implemented they are worthless.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly for her time today.

I was interested to hear about the Covid recovery fund and very interested to read the press statement from the European Court of Auditors, which stated:

Citizens will only trust new ways of EU funding if they can be sure that their money is being spent properly ... Currently, there is a gap in terms of the assurance the Commission can provide for the EU's main pandemic recovery fund and a lack of accountability at EU level.

There is that magic word "accountability".

My first question arises from the subject of bags of cash and so on. In her role as European Ombudsman, and because of the job she has to do, how is Ms O'Reilly received in the Parliament? Does she find that certain groups will work with her more or less? If she comes across something in one of her investigations in her role as ombudsman, can she refer it to the European Court of Justice, or is there a separate system in that regard?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I thank the Deputy for that question. If I come across something that seems a little on the criminal end of things, I can certainly refer it to OLAF, which is the European anti-fraud agency, and of course we now have the European Public Prosecutor's Office, EPPO. They deal with those sorts of issues.

As for the funding, it is a huge amount of money that is there and of which we are all beneficiaries. One of the key ways of ensuring that that money is spent well is that people like the committee members and ordinary citizens can keep an eye on it. Therefore, people need to know how much is coming in, where it is going, who is getting it and what is happening with it. This is part of the plan. It seems to me entirely reasonable that people should be able to do that because, ultimately, it is their money and is being spent in their interests. We got quite a lot of complaints, as I said, first of all from people who were trying to find the details of national plans for particular countries, which were not being produced. Then we have asked the Commission to let us know how it intends to make this information public in such a way that people can easily access it and keep an eye on things. With a lot of money swirling around, there is potential for it to be spent inappropriately and not in accordance with the plan. Also, people need to see that it is being spent fairly. Recently, the Parliament passed a resolution on making sure that the names of the people who receive the most significant amounts of money are made public.

There are all sorts of data protection issues involved in this as well. The basic principle is that people would know where the money is, be able to follow it, know who is getting it and if it is being spent properly because this is vital to us all. It is vital in countries, including our own, which struggles in certain areas such as health. We have a lot of environmental problems which we need to deal with as well. Given the focus these funding streams have on the environment and spending the money on environmental projects, it is important that everybody is enabled to keep an eye on it. It is not to be done in a sort of judgmental or nosy parker way. In a way, it helps the EU administration and the Commission if they know there are other eyes on it and that the money that has been put together very rapidly is being spent well. It is a work in progress. I think the money is starting to be spent now, so it is important that everybody sees how that is going.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, €724 billion is a lot of money, and €989 million is a lot of money.

I want a tip on something else. I asked Ms O'Reilly about referring cases to the European Court of Justice, ECJ, or to the Public Prosecutor's Office within the EU because I approached the European Court of Justice a number of months ago with what I feel is a human rights-based issue. I wrote to Ms O'Reilly's office but the issue seemed to be outside her remit. In fairness, she kindly replied to me quickly. I was asking about this because it has come up here a number of times. It relates to an old folks' mental health centre where people are being taken out of a setting - we will call a hotel - and putting them into a tent. The difference in the standards is clear. The issue that is causing the centre to be closed is that the building is said to be not fit for purpose. On the basis that the residents are being moved to a place that is even less compliant, it is actually against the HSE's own policy. It is upsetting the patients and their families. I have tried everything in this country and I cannot get answers because of the accountability which Ms O'Reilly mentioned. Also the problem we have here in Ireland with the HSE is that we have no oversight. Is there a way or a channel for me to work on that issue?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

We can get involved in an issue if it has some link to the European administration. That is why we do not get too involved specifically in member state issues because usually they are issues that are being dealt with at member state level. However, where there is a link, we can get involved. While I am not terribly familiar with this, I imagine the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union must kick in to this somehow. Perhaps that is worth exploring because there are obviously built-in protections there in relation to the sort of matters the Deputy is dealing with. Regarding the ECJ, sometimes the better path to go is directly to the European Court of Justice because of the particular matters at issue, and certainly if they are not purely administrative. I apologise that this is a bit vague.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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That is absolutely perfect. I wanted to see had I gone in the right direction. I know it takes time for the European Court of Justice to go through the cases but I just wanted clarity. I am glad Ms O'Reilly has given me that information and there is actually an avenue there.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Did the Deputy approach my office?

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I wrote to Ms O'Reilly's office and received a response back. I gather from the response that it was a matter for the European Court of Justice so I decided to go there.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

If the Deputy wants me to look at that again or if there is any other issue in relation to it, I would be happy to do so. We always try to be helpful and at least direct people to where they can best go. The Deputy should feel free to get in touch again if he needs to.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly very much.

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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I hope Ms O'Reilly is well. I thank her for attending the Committee of Public Petitions and for briefing members on her annual report. I am interested in chatting to her about the accountability in decision-making. She mentioned in her opening statement references to information requests around inappropriate or opaque lobbying. Her report also talks about tobacco lobbyists. Obviously the EU is party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control "according to which it must prevent the tobacco industry from having a negative impact on public health policies". My assumption was that tobacco lobbyists are not welcome in Brussels but that may be more particular to health policy. This brings to mind the issue of fossil fuels lobbyists. I am aware it is not within Ms O'Reilly's remit but COP27 was attended by more than 600 fossil fuels lobbyists, which was more delegates than the combined total of the ten countries most impacted by climate change. We saw various comparisons drawn between COP and fossil fuel lobbyists. Arms dealers would not be seen at peace conventions or indeed tobacco lobbyists at health conferences. Returning to the European Parliament, Russian interests are barred from the European Parliament. When I think about fossil fuel lobbyists, many MEPs take information and guidance through events or briefing notes from fossil fuel lobbyists. Sometimes these are the likes of Eurogas, FuelsEurope, or Hydrogen Europe. These organisations have been called Trojan horses for the likes of Shell and other companies. If I believe fossil fuel lobbyists should be barred from the European Parliament, and that transparency of dealing with them is not enough given the climate crises we have to deal with, what can we learn from the experience of the tobacco rules? What works and what does not work in terms of those rules? I assume Ms O'Reilly will not make comment on whether we should bar fossil fuel lobbyists but my question is on what works and what does not work in terms of the tobacco rules.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

That is a really good question. The Senator is referring to Article 5 of the UN Convention in relation to control of tobacco and that refers to narrowing, to the greatest extent possible, the contacts between tobacco lobbyists and administrations. We had a case several years ago in relation to that in which I was very critical of the Commission. DG SANTE, in other words, the department of health in the Commission, was the only department that was registering its meetings with the tobacco lobbyists. We were of the opinion that if the spirit of Article 5 of that UN Convention on the control of tobacco was being followed, meetings right across the Commission would be registered and publicised. It makes sense because tobacco lobbyists are not just lobbying the health department; they might avoid this department. However, they are possibly lobbying across trade, competition and all sorts of areas. I am still scratching my head wondering why, when that was such an easy thing for the Commission to do, it did not do it. There may be some big lobbying thing at the back of all of that; I do not know.

That was the easy part of the Senator's question in a way. On fossil fuel lobbying, I am sure it is incredibly intense with the fuel crisis, the climate crisis and all of that in there at the eye of the storm. The difficulty is how one slices and dices fossil fuel lobbyists, who they are and what they are representing. Some of them may be representing parts of the industry, parts of companies or whatever organisation commissioners or parliamentarians feel they need to talk to. It is not that fossils fuels and everything that comes from them are going to be eliminated overnight. Processes are ongoing. The most important thing for me is that they are made transparent but also that people understand the forms that lobbying takes. It is not simply somebody marching up to a Commissioner's office, knocking on the door and saying "hello, can I lobby you about this". It is much more subtle than that.

Some members may recall there was a big leak of papers related to lobbying by Uber. It was trying influence regulation across the EU to liberalise the taxi market and so on. The myriad of tactics it used were extraordinary. Those are the tactics used across the board, though not all of them are used by every company or sector. I can imagine that is being done intensively with respect to tobacco, because I think the tobacco regulation is being revised, and certainly with respect to fossil fuels.

I was reading Politico, a Brussels-based media outlet, this morning. It detailed the amount of lobbying going on by the people who produce arms in the defence industry as the EU embraces a much greater role in that than people might ever have imagined. Lobbying, therefore, is very intense. Going back to Qatargate, one might ask why it is important to lobby the Parliament. It is important because the Parliament is really important. People have an outdated view of the powers of the Parliament that goes back 20 or 30 years, before the Lisbon and Nice treaties and the Parliament's becoming a co-legislator with the Council. We do many investigations into many complaints related to lobbying and it is the same message all the time, namely, the administration must be aware of the various ways lobbying is done and it must be done transparently. This issue about tobacco lobbying has come up again and there is an issue with the fact many of those meetings have not been registered. It does not mean that if a freedom of information, FOI, request is made asking whether the Directorate General for Competition has met any tobacco lobbyist or people representing the industry recently, it will say "Yes". It could give it but it will not proactively tell it. It is also probably not the case that tobacco lobbyists will not be found at health conferences, because we have now moved into vaping and all that, so the influencing piece is about trying to persuade people this is healthier than the regular old cigarettes. I am not sure they always make that clean divide between them.

Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein)
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Thank Ms O'Reilly for her comments. I appreciate her work and thank her for it.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Following the investigation into the FOIs concerning the text messages between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer, are the recommendations Ms O'Reilly drew up enforceable? Is she confident of that?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

There were two sets of recommendations. On the text messages exchanged between President von der Leyen and the head of Pfizer, Mr. Bourla, we were recommending it be established whether they are there. I think it is taken now that they are, if only because Mr. Bourla wrote a book and talked about them. If they are there, then we should see whether they can be released under Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, which is the freedom of information legislation. We were not saying they should be released, as there might be reasons they should not be, but we were saying we should get them and examine them. I have used this expression before, but the Commission basically stonewalled us, so we do not know. We have had no further information about them. As I said in my opening statement, it was The New York Timesthat requested the text messages at the start and it is taking the Commission to court. The Commission is now saying it will wait until the court decides on this and then move on it. However, it is not as simple as that. I have looked into it, the European Court of Auditors has looked into it, and we now have the European Public Prosecutor's Office seriously looking into it. We do not know what exactly it is looking into, but it is looking into the vaccine contracts generally.

The problem with all this is it has dogged the Commission for the past few years. It is problematic because it plays into what the Eurosceptic and anti-vax communities say. People can accept a lot if they feel people are being open and honest with them. I have no idea what was in the text messages, but perhaps President von der Leyen should have said at the outset they were from a time when tens of thousands of Europeans were dying and there was chaos across Europe. This was before any vaccines had come. The deal with AstraZeneca had fallen through because of contractual issues and it was giving a better deal to the UK or whatever it was. We desperately needed to make a better deal with somebody else. Maybe not everything was done by the book and so on, but the President did it anyway. If she had done that, people would have been understanding of it, but when something is hidden, all sorts of conspiracy theories arise around it and it is not good for the Commission, which is doing so much good work in other areas, to allow this to fester because it does not go away and it will not go away.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Ms O'Reilly also dealt with the issue of revolving doors and the appropriateness of staff moving from EU institutions into related areas of the private sector. Some of the investigations of issues she has done can portray the institutions in a negative light and reduce the level of trust people have in those institutions. Will Ms O'Reilly comment first on the overall issue from her perspective? I ask her then to comment on lessons learned regarding her findings about the maladministration in how the European Defence Agency handled its former CEO's move to Airbus.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

There were two particular cases we dealt with and we found maladministration in both. Subsequently, both the European Banking Authority and the European Defence Agency said they would tighten the rules on revolving doors and allowing people to go the private sector. They were quite egregious cases. The European Banking Authority was set up after the financial crisis to help restore faith in financial regulation. In Ireland, we know all about what poor financial regulation did and what was inflicted. The then head of the European Banking Authority was allowed leave and become a senior member of one of the biggest banking and financial lobbying firms in Europe. We said explicitly that if there was one job that should have been forbidden by the banking agency, it should have been that one. I do not have to explain to the Cathaoirleach why that was clearly a conflict of interest, but governments had to do so much after the financial crisis to build up trust in them and in the financial system again. Then something like that happens in an agency created partly to restore citizens' trust. We can see why that is problematic. In the European Defence Agency case, its former head was allowed go to Airbus, which is one of the agency's biggest contractors. Again, one can see why that was problematic. I am not sure whether the European administration sees why this is a problem. I am not talking specifically about these two cases, but it is a form of insider trading.

The people who are most valuable to the private sector are not really the Commissioners and the higher-ups. They are good for branding, but the people who are really important to the private sector are the ones who do the intricate, hard work of drawing up the regulations and so on. They know everything that needs to be done to shape or amend regulations and so on. Often, it is the mid-level managers, such as heads of unit and so on, who are attracted to big consultancies, lobbying firms and so on. Members can google "Ten biggest consultancies in Brussels" and scroll through the results. Inevitably, they will see consultancies literally bragging about who they have. They will say they have former heads of unit from the Directorate General for competition, Directorate General for trade, or whatever. They will say they have a certain number of former enforcement officials. What is that about? They are saying they have all the knowledge those former officials have that can be used to help the customer shape future regulation in the way he or she wishes. I was talking recently about this precise issue to the head of one part of the European administration. This person had formerly worked in a law firm and they mentioned the time the firm took on a middle-ranking but very influential person in a particular department. The person said the firm had a cocktail party because everyone was so delighted. Sometimes I feel it is like a parallel universe. On the one hand the Commission is saying everything is okay, this is managed, it says there are rules and it has told former officials they cannot do this, while on the other hand the consultancies are throwing cocktail parties because they know they have something very valuable indeed. That is why this is problematic.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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On a related issue, there are concerns about EU cohesion funding and agriculture spending, in particular, a conflict of interest with regard to the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. The European Court of Auditors has cited its concerns about the identification of conflicts of interest and stated that self-declarations are not necessarily the most reliable way of achieving full transparency. I do not believe anybody will dispute the concerns about self-declaration of a conflict of interest, which are not mandatory in all countries in the first place. How concerned is Ms O'Reilly about that?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Is the Chairman referring to the CAP?

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, and self-declarations of conflicts of interest.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Self-declarations are a bit like voluntary declarations and so on. Sometimes they work. Most people are honourable and do it but sometimes they do not work. Very often, one begins with voluntary and ends with mandatory. This is why these things have to be transparent. We often see this in the aftermath of a scandal. For example, with the European Parliament, things that were voluntary have had to be made mandatory and things had to be tightened up. One of the pieces we did in relation to CAP was around who lobbies on the CAP and whether the Commission is open to environmental concerns. I am not saying that farmers and the agricultural sector are not interested in the environment - of course they are - but we were looking at whether the Commission is hearing as much from the NGO and environmental sector as much as it is hearing from the industrial side. My view is in favour of having whatever works but because people are always going to screw the system and find some way of getting around it, one very often finds it is easier to make things mandatory. For example, there is a transparency register in Brussels where people are supposed to register as lobbyists and so on. It has moved from being voluntary to being effectively mandatory because voluntary was simply not working. People were hiding and not playing the game. They were lobbying in secret and trying to do it in the shadows. That was not good.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly for engaging with the committee again. It is great to have her before us again. I thank her for her opening statement, on which I will first ask some questions. Ms O'Reilly spoke about the types of queries and complaints that her office deals with, including fundamental rights by EU agencies involved in asylum and migrant issues; revolving doors, which I heard her address a few moments ago; staff complaints; and, more generally, around EU administration. Will Ms O'Reilly address that EU administration piece? What does it incorporate specifically?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

It could be anything. Someone may have written to the Commission and it did not write back or, to give an example, let us say an Irish person got a contract or grant to do a particular job and the Commission identified a problem and was looking for its money back or refusing to provide the next tranche of money. That person could come and complain to us and we would have access to whatever documents we would need for research in our investigation. We would look very carefully through the file and if we discovered that the Commission had made a mistake or had not taken into account force majeure, we would make a recommendation accordingly. That happens quite often given the sheer number of people who get contracts and grants from the Commission, as members can imagine.

Another interesting case in that broad administrative area concerns EPSO, the European Personnel Selection Office. It has one job which is to hold competitions for administrators and assistants in the EU. Thousands of mainly younger people apply to EPSO and the process includes very tough exams and so on. During Covid and for a little while afterwards, EPSO decided that instead of bringing people to its standard external examination centres, it would have people do these tests online at home on their computers. This led to terrible stress for a lot of people whose computers would not work properly or who did not have the correct space to do the test in. All sorts of issues were raised. Basically, it seems that EPSO fell in love with the technology and forgot about the humans behind that technology who were trying to wrestle with it. We wrote to EPSO asking it basically to explain itself. It had not even tested the system before trying it out. Those are the sorts of administrative issues that we would deal with.

The cases that tend to be highlighted more are the ones I mentioned, ethical issues and issues around transparency and so on. A lot of those issues, such as those I described in relation to EPSO, are from small, single-person associations, companies and so on. For example, researchers who get a bit of money from the Commission may not do their accounts properly or may make a mistake and the Commission can sometimes be a little harsh on them because people can be harsh on the Commission in turn if it does not properly manage the funds. I would not quite say we are in the middle but we are basically trying to get the full story out there and, fundamentally, to see that what the Commission did was fair and just.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I note that in 2021 the European Ombudsman's office opened 338 inquiries investigating complaints. Ms O'Reilly referred to her office's own-initiative investigations in matters of public interest. Does that extend to Qatargate? I am sure there are many own-initiative investigations in the European Ombudsman's office? Some will arise from complaints, I presume, and then others will be own-initiative investigations. Will Ms O'Reilly elaborate on the own-initiative investigations?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Even though we had received a lot of individual complaints about EPSO and could have addressed those piecemeal, we decided instead to do it as a systemic investigation. With Qatargate, in an effort to be helpful to it, we got involved in the appraisal of the European Parliament of what it has on the table. Again, we are basically scanning the horizon and seeing where we could usefully get involved. We did one own-initiative investigation where we took on the revolving doors. We looked at 100 files of people who had left the Commission around 2021 and 2022 to go outside of the Commission, albeit not always to the private sector. We looked not at the individuals but how the Commission had handled that. This was an own-initiative investigation. Quite a few years ago, we looked into the transparency of the negotiations that were then ongoing between the EU and the US on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP.

Our investigations are not done in a spirit of being critical but one of lending our expertise. Obviously, the Commission has a problem if something has become systemic. That is the spirit into which we enter into these matters. That is a flavour of some of the own-initiative investigations we do.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I was taken by Ms O'Reilly's remarks on the transparency of environmental decision-making. She said her office is receiving an increasing number of complaints in this area each year. Based on a figure of 338 complaints made in 2021, when Ms O'Reilly says the number is increasing, by how much is it increasing each year? To what breadth of complaints does this extend?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I do not have the figures here but I can certainly send them to the committee. They would extend, for example, to something like a particular environmental directive not being enforced or the Commission not doing anything about it. One I talk about frequently involved advice that had been given by the European Food Safety Authority in relation to pesticides and bees. Obviously that is a big environmental issue now. It always was but perhaps it has become more full focus with our obvious interest in all matters to do with the climate crisis, the environmental crisis and so on. Basically, somebody wanted to know why that advice, which was being deliberated upon by the Council and the member states, was stuck and was not being acted on. Obviously the reason is that there are member states who do not want to act on it.

The requester, which was a French environmental NGO called Pollinis, wanted to know what were the member state positions in respect of this advice. In other words, it wanted to know who was holding this up. Was it Ireland, France, Spain or Sweden? With that information, the organisation could then direct its own lobbying or influencing in respect of this but the answer was: “No”, because the Commission, which had charge of these documents, took the view that there was a greater public interest in protecting the deliberative process. It recognised the public interest, even though the Commission was holding this process up, but it reckoned that protection of the deliberative process was more important. I found that - I did not use this word then but I will use it here – to be ridiculous. The deliberative process is fine if it is for six months or a year but it is not fine if it is eight, nine or ten years.

Since then Pollinis has gone to the ECJ, which has agreed and has stated there is no reason these positions and documents should not be reached, which was entirely in line with what our office had said. It now has to go back to the Commission again, where it has to redo the whole thing. Some ten years later, people still do not know.

Another environmental case that also is of interest is one we did in respect of the BlackRock investment company, which is one of the biggest investment companies in the world using trillions and trillions of dollars it invests on behalf of its clients and so on. It also invests in the fossil fuel industry. There was a competition and the BlackRock investment company was given a contract to basically help to do some research on the rules that should apply to banks regarding investments in sustainability projects. The complaint we received was that there was a conflict of interest because BlackRock has, according to the complainant, a vested interest in the continuation of things as they are and that this is in conflict with the Commission’s very ambitious programme in respect of the climate crisis. We looked at this. We did not find maladministration because the officials who were dealing with the contracts and who had examined various applicants and so on were looking at the rules at a time when a conflict of interest was defined in a very narrow way and did not encompass the sort of conflicts the complainants saw. We did say, however, that the legislator should take a look at this. That is happening now because in the new financial regulation, there is going to be a review of the conflict of interest that would encompass the sort of conflicts of interest that the applicant and which, indeed, ourselves, had identified in that.

The point I made in this regard was that one has to see all of this environmental piece as a piece and even the small thing mattered. One has to keep an eye on everything and pesticides and bees matter. The contract with BlackRock matters and it all forms part of a piece. It is not just the really big climate regulations that we make that matter, as everything matters and that is why these small pieces are also important.

Obviously, people have become much more conscious of this and, let us face it, some are terrified by it. That is why we are seeing such an increase in the numbers of complaints. I will get the figures for the Deputy and have them sent to him.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the European Ombudsman and that will be helpful. Following on from that, Ms O'Reilly launched the public consultation and I am aware that her office is still analysing that. Is she at liberty to tell us the volume of respondents that her office had to that public consultation?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I believe it was in the hundreds and would not have been in the thousands. It was of piece of public consultation by the Commission. What I believe is important are the kinds of people and the sectors which did respond to us. There were many NGOs involved in this and which take a deep interest in it. Again, as I have said, we are analysing this and we will have the results out. I believe we will find perhaps a certain frustration in respect of accessing environmental information.

Certainly, the Aarhus Convention is far more liberal in respect of the release of documents when it comes to emissions, for example, or other climate matters but sometimes administrations choose to see the more restrictive FOI Act approach, rather than the Aarhus Convention and the Acts which emerged from that,including our own environmental regulations, which are much more liberal and make it incumbent on the administrations to release many more documents than would be the case if it was an issue being tested or requested under FOI legislation. We will probably find that reflected in the responses we get.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly. I have a number of other question but perhaps I will put those in the second round if the Chair does not mind.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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It is not too often that we get the European Ombudsman to attend and I will catch her on the spot. I wish to return to an issue about which I have spoken to her, namely, the health centres, and so on. She may remember that I mentioned a mental health and respite centre for old folks, the Owenacurra mental health centre in Midleton, County Cork. If I send the details to her, can the European Ombudsman give me a commitment that she might even look at it, because I believe it is a human rights issue?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

It is unlikely that I will say “No” to the Deputy but, in any event, I will, of course, look at, it as we look at everything. It is very important to me that we help everybody who comes to us and that if we cannot help people directly, we certainly would direct people to where they can receive help. I am not just making this offer to the Deputy but to anybody who is turning to us. If this is something the Deputy would like to discuss with one of my investigators to get a clearer view where, if what we write to the Deputy is not in itself sufficient, then I would be happy to arrange that as well.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I would greatly appreciate that and I thank Ms O'Reilly very much.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I thank the Deputy very much. I know that all of the Deputies have busy lives and wear multiple hats so I appreciate the Deputy’s coming to listen to me and to pose that question.

First, I am very proud at the speed at which we do turn around complaints, which is largely thanks to an excellent Irish director of investigations, Rosita Hickey. She became a director approximately two years ago and we have worked very hard at this because my experience as Irish Ombudsman was that there was great frustration when there are delays. We looked at our processes very intensively with an old-fashioned time-and-motion study, asking what bits we could leave out and the bits we could put in to speed up the process. As a result, we have dramatically brought down the time it takes us to deal with a complaint.

The majority of the complaints would be dealt with in under a year, or perhaps six months, and there are probably statistics there in the report which I furnished to the committee, but compared with a few years ago, it has improved a great deal.

The text messages is really difficult for everybody because, as the Deputy would know, perhaps the younger one is, the more one is aware of it. People do not talk to one another any more. It is WhatsApp messages, even if people are sitting beside each other. Certainly, that is the case for the younger generation, as I know my own children would be horrified if I asked them to pick up the telephone, to ring somebody and talk to him or her, instead of WhatsApping the person. This is a cultural piece which we all have to become accustomed to.

Within public administrations, however, I am sure everyone heard about the whole Matt Hancock saga in the UK with respect to his WhatsApp messages and everything. We commit a great deal to our smartphones, and all of that.

The issue that arises is where important public business is being discussed. Where ten years ago that business would be conducted by letter, it would be sent by registered post, etc., now there is a quick tap on the phone and so on. What we have been trying to do, in collaboration with the Commission services - other institutions are taking an interest in this also - is to try to put in place a framework. What are we trying to capture? We are trying to capture messages that have to do with the business of the institution that a person is in, and especially internal to external - in other words, if one is dealing with people outside the Commission or whatever.

Then the second aspect relates to how to capture them. What is the process by which one physically captures the message and registers it. Different parts of the administration have different ways of doing it. For example, when people from Frontex, the external border agency, are out on missions, they are all assigned particular phones for their WhatsApp messages. Everything in there is a document. That is the way Frontex does it. Sometimes people take screen grabs of messages they think should be registerable and do it that way. The purpose of the discussions with the Commission and others is to try to find a way of doing this that captures the important business and that there is a document of how a particular regulation, policy or whatever has been developed, just as there would have been years ago in document folders, on microfiche and all of that. It is simply a way of trying to adapt to the need to have a historical record of policy-making, and how to do it in the era of smartphones.

We made certain recommendations. They are reasonably basic and general. I am sure they will be refined as time goes on. We can send them to the committee. To a degree, it is a work in progress. One of the biggest pieces of work is getting the administration to realise that these are documents. In other words, people are talking about the business of their departments and these messages are documents. I visited Sweden and Denmark last year. I was talking about the text message case relating to the Commission and Pfizer. The people to whom I was speaking were astonished because those sorts of messages would be automatically registered in their countries. There is no argument or discussion. They are about business, they are classed as documents and there is a way to register them. It is a work in progress. We are looking at best practice of other bodies, other member states and so on. We have made some recommendations as to best practice, but I think we will refine these as time goes on.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Yes. I will give a very practical example. We get complaints about failure to reply, which is literally that. A communication to the Commission will state that it has not responded to someone and that they are going to approach my office. Sometimes, these are failure to reply because it just did not happen. The correspondence just got caught up in the system, or sometimes there might be a deeper reason as to why there has not been a reply. It could be a tricky issue or something of that nature. They are not the same. We deal with many of these. We wanted to speed up the way in which we processed them in order that we could quickly get to the nub of any issues that were relevant and deal with ones that could be remedied more easily. We did a time-and-motion study whereby we looked at every step: the complaint comes in to Mary and Mary passes it to Anne and Anne passes it to Patrick – these are not their names, by the way, as members can probably guess – and so on. I remember seeing a visual of all the sticky notes that represented the various parts of the system we have for dealing with failures to reply. There must have been about 30 sticky notes. Now we are down to about five or ten as a result of the fact that we could see where the faultlines were in the system. There was a touch of people taking the approach that this was the way it had always been done. There was also a touch of them being a little bit shy about taking responsibility, making a decision and then moving on to the next step. It was also about empowering people at less senior levels to have the courage to make decisions once they were properly trained and so on. If they were stuck on something, there would be others who could be asked. Basically, we were going around in circles a lot and people were not really happy to take responsibility to sign off on things.

I remember talking to colleagues and saying that in the past, when something like this was done in a factory, it was called a time-and-motion study. Someone would look at a conveyor belt in order to find out what everyone was doing at different points. It was then a case of seeing how production could be speeded up. It is not rocket science. We also have to think about it in the context of the culture, however. It is really important that people are responded to in a very human way and quickly, even if it is not good news. We heard about the colleague we advised to go to the European Court of Justice, but I was glad to hear that we responded quickly. That is important because stress levels are brought down when people get an answer and when there is genuine communication. Those of us who have wrestled with phone companies or banks through their call centres or talking to people who are reading from pieces of paper know that one does not feel as though one is being listened to. Part of what I try to do in my office, to the greatest extent possible, is to have people believe that there really is somebody listening to and hearing them. Even if we cannot help someone, we advise them as to who might do so.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I was struck by chapter 6 of the annual report, which relates to how the office helps the public. It is mentioned that some of the complaints were referred to the European Commission, which Ms O’Reilly spoke about earlier, to national or regional ombudsmen and to EU networks such as Europe Direct and Solvit. Why are Europe Direct and Solvit referred to? If Ms O'Reilly will excuse my ignorance, what is their role?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

They have more of a role if there is a cross-border element to a complaint. Take a dentist in Italy who has difficulty getting registered in France or someone wants to set up a particular business in one country in Europe and cannot do so in another. They deal with cross-border matters. There may be problems arising from the European Internal Market when it is not working as it should. We do not have a mandate in that regard. We are purely related to the European administration. If people have an issue with the processes, etc., of the Internal Market in the context of whatever sector they are interested in, we direct them to Solvit.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly. The report categorises the various agencies with which her office has been dealing. Ms O’Reilly referred to this in her responses to the committee. The European Commission accounts for the vast bulk of complaints, which is understandable. I was surprised because I thought that maybe the European Parliament or whatever might be the next highest.

I was struck by Ms O'Reilly's reference to other institutions or bodies - her report sets out that 10% of complaints related to the European Central Bank, ECB; the European Investment Bank, EIB; and the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA; and that 6.5% of complaints related to the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, EISMEA; and the European Union Agency for Cyber Security, ENISA - because I would have thought that in light of the European Parliament's size and given Qatargate and everything else, there might be more complaints there. Again, I am not asking for specifics but am trying to get a general sense. Those other agencies account for just over 16% of the volume of cases, whereas the Commission accounts for 61% of the cases. It may be straightforward to understand why some cases involve the ECB, but what is driving this volume of complaints regarding the other organisations?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

First of all, the reason we do not get complaints about the European Parliament is that I do not have a mandate in the political work of the Parliament. If people are giving out about the actions of an MEP, the positions taken by an MEP or anything that has to do with the political business of the Parliament, that has nothing to do with our office. It is outside the mandate. We have a role in the administration of the Parliament, but not in the political work. I think most people who have complaints about the Parliament would have them in relation to the political work rather than the administrative work. That is why there are so few complaints. Deputy Devlin was right to point that out.

EPSO probably features relatively highly because many thousands of people apply for those jobs. Sometimes things go wrong and they think they have been treated unfairly, and we look at that.

Of the smaller agencies, the ECB and EIB obviously do very important business within the EU. We often get complaints about access to documents. Sometimes we get complaints about the investments made by the EIB. There may be allegations about conflicts of interest, not with the EIB but perhaps with some of the contractors that they have involved in some of the investments. Issues with access to information about funding and the protection of the environment in the work they do can also arise. For the other agencies, complaints could be made about access to documents or whatever their work involves. Staff complaints can be made regarding failure to get a promotion, some aspect of staff regulations not being followed, or people generally feeling they have been treated unfairly. Those have been the issues.

We get complaints regarding the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, as well. They tend to relate to access to documents about the work it is doing on the borders. We might get NGOs making complaints regarding how some of the agencies dealing with asylum, etc., have dealt with asylum seekers and so on. When it comes to migration and asylum, we are not looking at what is happening in Greece, specifically, or what is happening in Italy or anywhere else. We are looking at the role that the various institutions or agencies are playing in those countries, and whether they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly. In keeping with that theme, I am continuing to refer to chapter 6 of the annual report, and specifically the table setting out the "Subject matter of inquiries closed by the European Ombudsman in 2021". Ms O'Reilly talked about recruitment being one of those elements. The table sets out that 29% of complaints are on transparency and accountability, 26% are on culture of service, 10% are on recruitment and 1.3% are on public participation in EU decision-making. It strikes me that there was just one complaint regarding whistleblowing, which is quite low. It accounts for 0.3% of the overall cases closed. Maybe there are still open cases dealing with whistleblowing. Given the volume of organisations Ms O'Reilly is dealing with - she mentioned recruitment - I would have thought it would have been a bit higher than 0.3%. Is whistleblowing not a very large element of the complaints?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

It is probably more likely that those complaints would go to OLAF. If a staff member in an institution believes that something untoward is going on in procurement, or in something to do with the finances, they are more likely to go to OLAF than they are to come to us. A whistleblower might come to us if they feel they have been badly treated, they have not been heard or they have been penalised in some way because they blew the whistle. The generality of whistleblowers' complaints, which might have to do with very serious or even quasi-criminal issues, are more likely to go to OLAF or even the EPPO.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly. That clarifies that. My colleague has spoken about the turnaround time. I was struck by that. Ms O'Reilly had a comparative piece from 2013 and 2021 in the annual report. I want to pay tribute to Ms O'Reilly, and all her colleagues in the small but very effective team in the office, because that is some turnaround time and some improvement on the turnaround time. Ms O'Reilly alluded in her opening remarks to how she prides her office on its responsiveness, as demonstrated in the annual report. Of course, here at home we know of your efficiencies. Again, I wish to compliment Ms O'Reilly and all the team there.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I thank Deputy Devlin. He is very kind.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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Fair play to Ms O'Reilly. I would love her job, to be honest. I would actually love her job.

Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Lobbying is lobbying.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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Absolutely. It is on the public record. I would like to return to something I have previously spoken to Ms O'Reilly about. I got the document and her office looked into it. The response that came back to the question I had about the issues with the Owenacurra centre was that the European Ombudsman can not look into complaints about publicly funded healthcare systems like the HSE. Where do I go to? Do I still go to the European Court of Human Rights on my issue, because it is a human rights issue?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

Health is largely a competence of the member states and not of the EU administration. Of course this was a big issue during Covid-19. There have been political moves since then to create a health union, with of course all sorts of incredibly sensitive issues around that. I will get my colleagues to get in touch with Deputy Buckley, and we can explore it together. Hopefully we will be able to help him. I know he is looking for something that is not possible for the Irish administration to solve. If the Deputy could come back to us, I can get back to him and see-----

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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It is a question of oversight and accountability. One cannot get anything. Once one goes into the system, whether it is the Mental Health Commission, the HSE, Tusla or anything else, it is just a constant circle. Ms O'Reilly spoke in her opening statement about accountability and transparency. That is where my bugbear was. As I said at the start, these are people, human beings, who are not being treated properly within a system. There does not seem to be a mechanism for it.

I want to congratulate Ms O'Reilly on the protected disclosure legislation as well. I watched that for about 18 months and I worked on trying to mirror the same legislation here. One sees the flip side now where it is not up to the whistleblower to prove the wrongdoing. It has flipped around now so that the onus is on whoever the accusations were made against. As I said, I have looked at all avenues here. I apologise for putting Ms O'Reilly on the spot. I am at my wits' end as I look for a solution and listen to family members. The most vulnerable people in their families have been mistreated, and yet there seems to be no accountability or oversight. Nobody in health is being held to account for this. There are no answers. As Ms O'Reilly said, when there is no accountability, and when you have to go from voluntary to mandatory to get accountability and responsiveness from individuals, there is something wrong with the system.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I do not know whether Deputy Buckley has gone to the Irish Ombudsman's office.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I have tried that.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I really empathise with what the Deputy is saying. At the moment, I have a relative in a hospital not here but in the UK. It is an NHS hospital in London and they are doing their best.

It is really hard to imagine that this is the richest city in one of the richest countries in the world when one sees the gaps in very basic care that this relative of mine is receiving. Of course I am not British but I know my way around and who to talk to. The frustration that my relative and I feel about the difficulty of getting decent care, let alone accountability for the poor quality of care, is horrible and the pain is horrible. The pain and frustration can be relieved in some degree if people are held accountable. I do not mean in a punishing way but somebody at least saying this should not happen and this is what we will do to fix it. After visiting my relative two weeks ago I went back to a nice hotel in London and had a nice dinner that evening with my daughter. I felt as if I had gone from the developing world into the developed world. One can read about the contrast but it is quite shocking when one experiences it. I know I am getting a bit emotional and personal about my own particular issue, but I really feel that way. I repeat it is a vital function of this committee that people want to be heard in that deep sense, where somebody has really listened to them and understood what they want and then attempted, even if they failed, to try to get it for them. Please come back to us and we will see if we can do anything in relation to that.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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I do not wish to dwell on this but there is frustration when you are trying to do the right thing. As Ms O'Reilly said, it is not about finger-pointing, but surely somebody has to take responsibility. That centre was fully integrated within a town where the people living in the centre could walk into the town. There was a doctor across the road in the community hospital. The dentist, the Garda barracks and Market Square were in close proximity. The people were taken out of that environment and moved up to what was once known as the old lunatic asylum, in Sarsfield Court, 7 or 8 miles away, with no access to anything. That is my issue. You can imagine the difficulties caused by this for a person who has mental health issues or is elderly. Such people have been in an integrated environment in the town and suddenly it is all taken away but they are told things are going to be okay. That is surely an injustice to the people involved.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

When I was Irish Ombudsman, we did a big investigation into nursing homes when the Fair Deal scheme emerged and a lot of private ownership of nursing homes. My own parents were very elderly at the time, and both have died since. Fortunately, neither of them had to experience nursing homes as they both died in a hospice. I remember seeing all these big, shiny nursing homes in fields, away from shops, away from people, away from life. Even if the people in the homes did not have the capacity to live life fully, it is all relative. The idea of "living fully" would mean something different to me than to someone else. I remember being at a conference of nursing home professionals where I referred to it as the warehousing of the elderly, and I was heavily criticised for that statement. I could understand that some people who owned some of those nursing homes were hurt by it because they did genuinely feel they were providing a good service. However, when I read about the care of the elderly in other parts of the world, there is a huge emphasis on keeping them connected to the community. It is not about just putting them out in some field or what the Deputy has described and I do not know the full details of that.

Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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Ms O'Reilly is fairly spot on there.

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I will probably hit over the head by somebody tomorrow because I have been interfering in this and I should not be. I get what the Deputy is saying.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Does the witness get many frivolous complaints? Looking at the annual report, there are 1,400 complaints that fall outside the European Ombudsman's mandate. Some 40% of those complaints come from just three countries, namely, Spain, Poland and Germany. What types of complaints were they and why do 40% of them come from just three countries?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

First, they are big countries. Spain has a very highly developed network of ombudsmen. They have a national ombudsman and many regional ombudsmen. Spanish people are very conscious of the role of the ombudsman. Sometimes it may be that they are complaining about something that is within the remit of the national authority and not the European authority. Sometimes it may be in relation to Catalonia. They can be political, which of course, we cannot get involved in either. In the last number of years there have been issues there in that regard about which we have received many complaints. Spain tops the table every single year. We examine every complaint and it tends to be that Spanish people are aware that an ombudsman solves problems. If they have a problem they will write to the ombudsman. They are aware of this because they have so many ombudsmen in their own country. They think at European level I might have more clout, but I have no say over the member state ombudsmen.

I imagine Poland probably has the same sort of issues. It may be political or it may be in relation to fundamental rights and the rule of law. Those sorts of issues have emerged much more strongly over the last while.

Germany does not have a national ombudsman. It has regional ombudsmen and a petitions committee. I think the majority of complaints come from the three countries because they are big member states. There are political issues in all three countries that people think may be resolved by the European Ombudsman. When it comes to member states, I do not have a role if it is within the competence of the national authorities.

Germany does not have an ombudsman. It is regional ombudsmen, but it has a petitions committee. I cannot say but I think it is largely because they are big member states. There are political issues in all of those countries that they think may have a better chance of being resolved by the European ombudsman may have a better chance of resolution. When it comes to member states, I simply do not have a role if it is within the competence of the national authorities.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms O'Reilly. As there are no more questions here, does she wish to make any final comments?

Ms Emily O'Reilly:

I thank the committee for being so engaged. The Committee on Public Petitions emerged many years ago after a report I did, famously called Lost at Sea, when for the first time ever, an Ombudsman's recommendation was not accepted because there was a political element to it. At the time, there was no dedicated committee for the hearing of Ombudsman's reports. The committee at the time, split along political lines. As a result of that, the petitions committee was set up. I remember it was Deputy Charlie Flanagan who was Chair at the time. He vowed to make it as non-political as was humanly possible in a parliament to make anything non-political. That is why it is a great pleasure for me to appear here. I wish the committee well in this work, because it is really important. This committee listens to the people in a very specific way and that is really important to them.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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Just going back to that, this committee has had changes. We have asked at the start that people leave their political allegiances outside the door. To be fair to all the members, they have done so. That is why we can work so well together, because there is none of that political bias. I thank Ms O'Reilly on behalf of the committee for appearing here today. It has been highly beneficial and we look forward to having her back again at a later date.