Dr. Niall Muldoon:

First, I am very happy to say that Ireland is a really good place for many children to grow up in. I have said before that we have it right for about 90% of our children. We have a really good system that works well, but for those children who are not in the normal boxes and require slight flexibility, there are problems.

As regards the complaints, and I will ask Ms Ward to comment, of the 1,790, we would tend to try to resolve 80% of complaints in the first five to six weeks. It is usually fairly quick. Usually we can sort them out ourselves in the first contact we make with the public service, whether it is a school or a hospital. They tend to say, "Okay, we have an issue and we will sort it out as quickly as we can". That is where we want to go. Every ombudsman's target is local resolution as quickly as possible.

There are more difficult cases that we have to deal with that might lead to a preliminary inquiry. There are very serious cases that are more complex altogether and those result in investigations. In a standard year, ten to 12 cases will go to investigation. It is a really small percentage. We want to resolve these as quickly as possible. That is where we go to at that stage. Ms Ward may want to add to that.