Maurice Hayes (Independent)

The office of the Ombudsman is one we can be proud of. By any international standard, it has been an outstanding office and I am glad to see the incumbent is maintaining the high standards of her predecessors. I congratulate her on that. I am also glad she is maintaining clarity of language and communication in her report, which makes it easy to read, and also that she is looking at the administrative procedures in her own office. It is always great to be able to say that the physician is healing herself.

I would like to concentrate not on particular cases, but on general principles. The Ombudsman is an officer of the Oireachtas, working on our behalf and on behalf of the citizens. The office therefore deserves all the support we can give it. As Senator O'Toole has said, it is a moral authority rather than a legal one. It is about one fair person in possession of the facts making a common sense judgment. As Senator Daly said, there are so many of these reports that it is a pity they are not used more as learning tools. They should be used more in the training of civil servants as examples either of good practice to be followed or of bad practice to be avoided. People should see where their policies, regulations or practices were deficient. As Senator O'Toole said, I was an ombudsman in another jurisdiction. Every year I would write to the heads of agencies, outlining the number of complaints received and indicating the specific areas under their control. This was not telling people how to do their jobs but it expressed the hope that they might investigate what was wrong in those particular places.

The other matter I found helpful was that a committee was dedicated to the Ombudsman, in the same way as the Committee of Public Accounts deals with the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General. That was helpful, because it meant that a Department which was performing poorly, as indicated by many complaints, could be interrogated by parliamentarians. The Accounting Officer could be asked to explain why so many complaints had been received. I would commend that to the Minister of State as a possibility to be considered. It is a pity that the Ombudsman puts in so much work and that there is such valuable information in these reports that, somehow, the waves wash over. It gives me great pleasure to congratulate the Ombudsman on the way she is performing her task currently and to thank her for her report and the work she is doing on our behalf.