Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

Emily O'Reilly was appointed to the offices of the Ombudsman and Information Commissioner in June 2003 for a term of six years. She is eligible for reappointment for a further six years, and the Government has decided to nominate her again for both positions. I am delighted that she is willing to serve a second term and to lead her office, where she enjoys public respect and confidence, in the challenges that lie ahead. I have a high personal regard for her and for her work.

The process of appointment to both positions is similar. Each appointment is made by the President on the recommendation of both Houses, hence the resolutions before the House.

I will put the proposed appointments in context. The first Ombudsman was Mr. Michael Mills, former political editor of The Irish Press, who served from January 1984 to October 1994. He established and developed the Ombudsman's central role of examining individual complaints against public bodies. During his term, and thanks largely to his efforts, the office achieved widespread respect and acceptance within the public administration. There were some political tensions and challenges, centred on the resourcing of the office, but they were successfully overcome and resolved.

The second Ombudsman, Mr. Kevin Murphy, former Secretary General for public service management and development in the Department of Finance, who served from November 1994 to May 2003, was also the first Information Commissioner under the Freedom of Information Act 1997. In the latter role, he contributed to a fundamental movement towards openness and transparency in administration while continuing to develop the services of the Ombudsman. As a Senator and member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service, I paid tribute to him at his last appearance before that committee.

The current Ombudsman has also seen her role enlarged. Since 2007, she holds the Office of Commissioner for Environmental Information, providing an independent appeals system to cater for applicants whose requests for environmental information have not been dealt with to their satisfaction. Furthermore, in her second term of office she will be required to oversee a substantial extension of her remit.

The Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill 2008 provides for the extension of the Ombudsman's jurisdiction to the administrative actions of vocational education committees, higher education institutions, and a range of other bodies whose administrative actions have not previously been subject to investigation. The Bill also provides the Ombudsman with additional powers and updates various provisions in the Ombudsman Act 1980 in light of the passage of time.

The Bill represents the most significant extension of the Ombudsman's remit in almost 25 years. At present, the Ombudsman is empowered to investigate complaints about the administrative actions of Departments and Government offices, the Health Service Executive, including the public voluntary hospitals, local authorities and An Post. The Ombudsman also has certain functions under the Disability Act 2005.

Since the Freedom of Information Act 1997 came into force, the Ombudsman has also held the office of Information Commissioner. As Information Commissioner, Ms O'Reilly and her distinguished predecessor have played a central role in establishing the freedom of information regime in Ireland. In this role, they have been a very important, independent force in helping to bring about a fundamental change in the relationship between the administration and the citizen, whereby most of the business of Departments is open to scrutiny under the Act, and rightly so. Her office has won the respect of citizens and of public servants alike, and she has been a strong and relentless advocate in articulating the importance of openness and transparency in Government.

The Ombudsman and her office have produced a series of guidelines for the public service, which serve as templates to improve the quality of specific aspects of customer service. These include The Ombudsman's Principles of Good Administration; The Ombudsman's Standards of Best Practice for Public Servants; The Ombudsman's Guide to Internal Complaints Systems; and Redress - Getting it Wrong and Putting it Right. These are based on lessons learned from individual complaints over the years and represent what the Ombudsman often refers to as the added value that her office brings to bear arising from that process.

It would be disingenuous of me were I not to acknowledge that the amendment of the freedom of information legislation in 2003 continues to cause some disagreement and controversy. I am glad to say that the ten year limitation on the release of Government memoranda and associated documents was not further extended when my party returned to office for a third time. Information requests can be time-consuming to process and some charge can be appropriate. The Ombudsman and Information Commissioner operates under legislation passed by the Oireachtas and there may be legitimate differences of opinion, based on different responsibilities and perspectives, with regard to how the best balance is to be struck.

As someone who was keen on such legislation being introduced and who once worked as an adviser for former the Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, one of whose mottos was "Letting in the light", something which is also being done in recent days in a tragic and appalling context, I would stress that the important point is that the current situation is a large advance on where we were and provides a progressive and relatively liberal framework. The secretive, more authoritarian culture of the past often served us very badly and, thankfully, today we have a far more open society. I would be concerned, however, at the diminished willingness of many public officials to commit to paper as fully, frankly and comprehensively as they might have done in the past, and at the dangers that this too may create.

Prior to her appointment as Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly was well known to us all as one of the most able and incisive journalists of her generation, and I remember a number of encounters with her in that capacity, both in a Northern Ireland and European context. Her work was widely read, highly respected, and heeded. The same can be said for her decisions in the past six years as Ombudsman and Information Commissioner. I am delighted to recommend her reappointment to the House.