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.