Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

I would also like to be associated with the reappointment of Emily O'Reilly to the role of Ombudsman. She has done an excellent job in the past six years, and I wish her another six years of equally being a good servant of the State, but I ask the Minister of State to ensure that there is adequate funding for her new role in the future. She will take on a much greater burden in the next six years covering all the institutions about which the Minister of State spoke. As someone who has used the Office of the Ombudsman to get some satisfaction for my constituents in the past, I understand there are certain limitations to her role because of the legislation under which she must operate. The changes made in 2003 to the Freedom of Information Act strike the balance the Minister of State spoke about between accountability and transparency in Government - what the Government does not want the people to know and what the people believe they should know. There will always be an argument about that because we would always prefer, certainly those of us in Opposition, to have as much openness, accountability and transparency as possible but there is a role for Government to try to limit that amount of information, especially controversial information.

The role of the Ombudsman is a positive one which solves genuine problems people experience in their dealings with State organisations and we should do everything we can to bolster that role. I have never seen any political involvement on the part of the Ombudsman. It has always been a balanced and open office to deal with, and long may that continue.