Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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344. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if each local authority is required to have a complaints officer or department; if not, the reason; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38807/22]

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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Section 7 of the Ombudsman (Amendment) Act 2012 places a statutory duty on public bodies (agencies) reviewable by the Ombudsman to put in place arrangements and resources for handling complaints.

The Ombudsman gives guidance to service providers for developing systems for dealing with complaints - www.ombudsman.ie/guidance-for-service-providers/

Any person who is dissatisfied with the quality of service provided by a local authority may make a complaint directly to that local authority. All local authorities have formal complaints mechanisms in place for handling complaints.

Having engaged with a local authority's Complaints and Appeals Procedure, if an individual continues to deem the response from the local authority to be unsatisfactory, the matter may be pursued further through the Office of the Ombudsman.

One of the functions of the Office of the Ombudsman is to investigate complaints that arise when members of the public have tried to access local government services and an unsatisfactory response to complaints has issued. The Ombudsman’s website details the sort of complaints concerning local authorities that it can investigate. There is a requirement for complainants to engage first with the relevant local authorities and exhaust local channels before escalating the complaint to the Ombudsman.