Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Minister of State on his new appointment and wish him success.

The Ombudsman states the following at the beginning of her report:

The Office of the Ombudsman relies on the authority which comes from its independence, impartiality and confidence to gain fair play for people who have been wronged by public bodies. As Ombudsman, I do not make binding decisions. The Department is free in law to reject my recommendations. My only recourse, when I consider that a public body's response to a recommendation is unsatisfactory, is to make a special report to each House of the Oireachtas under the Ombudsman Act. This is such a report.

The Ombudsman has asked us to consider the report. Since she gave the report to the Department, she has obviously made a number of comments on how the report is being dealt with. That is the focus of the Fine Gael motion. It has been a tortuous process to get to the point where Deputy Sargent has written to the committee today and the committee, probably prompted by this motion, has decided to invite the Ombudsman to appear before it.

The Ombudsman also said:

by preventing the Oireachtas from dealing with the report, the Government parties have brought about a situation in which the Government has been able to act as a judge in its own case. The saga began with maladministration and has ended, to date at least, with poor governance.

She states this may be about loyalty and goes on to make some comments about this. She also asks how the role of the Ombudsman fits into the wider arrangements for the Government and how the Government should act in supporting her in fulfilling her statutory role. She states it is a bit odd to be raising those questions 30 years after the passing of the Ombudsman Act 1980 and 26 years after the setting up of the Office of the Ombudsman. She points out that this type of situation has only arisen once before; we made reference to this and the fact that a solution was found in that case. She states no solution has been found to how she believes the report should be dealt with.

The Ombudsman goes on to state that one of the big criticisms about governance has been the lack of regulation. She quotes the Financial Regulator and the work that was not done, of which we are all very conscious now. She points out that she is trying to do her work and be accountable, yet the way the report has been dealt with goes against what everyone has been saying about the need for oversight, governance and respect for the independent monitoring of the Ombudsman.

Whatever about the detail or the recommendations of the report, the way it has been dealt with by the Government and the way the Ombudsman has been treated is not good enough in a modern democracy. While the Minister of State may defend the detail of the report and the Department's current view, that is not really the point. The point of the motion is to examine how the report has been dealt with by the Government since it was published, as well as the reluctance to put it before the committee for investigation by that committee. I would welcome the Minister of State outlining before the committee what he outlined today. Equally, the Ombudsman should have the opportunity to present her findings in the way she has done in the report, following which there should be a discussion on it. That is the key point of our motion. We have not had that to date, and I hope we get an opportunity for it now.

I ask the Government to support the motion. The committee has indicated it will have this hearing; therefore, what we are saying looks like being accepted and the decent thing to do would be to accept the motion, rather than oppose it on spurious grounds.