The year in review

Business Plan 2000-2001

The business plan embraces the Office of the Ombudsman, the Office of the Information Commissioner and the Secretariat to the Standards in Public Office Commission. The plan defines our purpose which is: “Helping to achieve a public service which is open, fair and accountable”. The plan identified five key strategic priorities for 2000-2001 period. These, together with the steps taken to achieve those priorities and the performance indicators employed were as follows:

Improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the service to our clients.

Under this heading, we decided to develop an improved case management system and improve client communications. Considerable progress was made in reviewing and refining our complaint screening and categorisation procedures. A staff workgroup reviewed all standard written communications with clients and significant improvements were made paying particular attention to the use of plain and simple language.

In relation to efficiency of complaint examination, our main target for 2001 was to increase the number of cases dealt with by 5% compared with 2000. In fact we increased the number of cases finalised by just 1%. One of the reasons which prevented us from reaching this target was the additional work associated with an 18% increase in complaint numbers received and there was significant staff turnover during the target period. In addition, substantial staff time was taken up with training for and implementation of the Performance Management and Development System (PMDS). However, as will be seen from what follows, substantial progress was made in achieving other business plan targets. The Business Plan for 2002-2003 will refine the complaint examination targets and our performance will be reported in future annual reports.

Increase public awareness.

As a first step in this area, we decided to develop a public awareness strategy, work on which was completed in 2001. One of the main features of the strategy is to devise methods of reaching clients in disadvantaged areas who are unaware of the existence of the Office of the Ombudsman and the services it provides. Further detailed work on the strategy is planned in the context of the development of the Business Plan 2002 - 2003 which is now underway.

Develop influence with key stakeholders.

The objective was to monitor legislative and other developments as they affected the Office of the Ombudsman (and, of course my other statutory functions) and to offer comments and suggestions to the sponsoring Departments. I gave observations to the Department of Health and Children in relation to the Ombudsman for Children Bill and I had informal contact with the Department of Defence in relation to the Ombudsman (Defence Forces) Bill. My Office also made a contribution to the recently launched public consultation document “Towards Better Regulation” in relation to arrangements for scrutiny of secondary legislation, the proposals for an Administrative Procedures Act, the relationship between the Ombudsman and the Courts and the role which the Ombudsman can play in ensuring the accountability of regulators.

Among the other issues on which I gave observations was the Agricultural Appeals Act, 2001 which brings the new Agricultural Appeals Office within the Ombudsman’s remit. This will enable me to examine final decisions of the Office where the appellant is dissatisfied with the outcome.

Build relationships and increase impact with public bodies within remit.

In May 2001, my Office hosted a seminar for the Quality Customer Service Officers’ Network. Under the Quality Customer Service Initiative, each Government Department/Office has appointed a Quality Customer Service Officer responsible for the preparation and implementation of its Customer Service Action Plan. My staff and members of the network engaged in dialogue about the barriers to provision of quality customer service and much of the seminar was devoted to exploring the provisions of the Ombudsman Act, 1980, and the principles of good administration which I bring to bear in deciding on the complaints which come before me. My staff devised a number of case studies which the delegates had an opportunity to work on and which illustrated some of these principles. The Director General of the Office of the Ombudsman, Pat Whelan, described the desirable features necessary for fair and effective internal complaints systems and the essential elements of redress.

In October 2001, my Office hosted a seminar attended by representatives from Government Departments/Offices. The seminar, which was well attended, explored the approach taken by my Office in examining and investigating complaints against public bodies. It also dealt with some of the key issues which I have addressed in recent years and with how my Office has been working with the civil service and other public bodies to improve the overall quality of public administration. The seminar provided an opportunity for a lively exchange of views as well as a greater understanding of how my Office works. As part of the seminar, the Liaison Officer for the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Joe Madden, gave a thought-provoking paper on the perceptions of my Office among senior officials in that Department. As a result of the feedback received from those who attended, I intend to arrange a number of follow-up events, including some workshops for Departments and Offices using some case studies of complaints to my Office.

One of the views expressed at the seminar was that the Ombudsman was overly negative in his criticisms of Government Departments and that I should also recognise the many positive developments which have taken place. This is a point which is often made to me but, unfortunately, it does not adequately recognise that my Office is complaint driven. By its very nature, my work tends to concentrate on the failings of public bodies and when I uphold a complaint it is because some act of maladministration has adversely affected a member of the public. My criticisms are well-meant, however, and are made with a view to achieving a degree of systemic change so that similar complaints will not recur. Also I do highlight cases in my annual reports where public bodies, on referral of complaints to them by my Office, have moved quickly to offer redress to complainants.

Performance Management and Development

Greater clarity of objectives, effective communications and individual accountability is being fostered by Government and much of the impetus for this is coming from within organisations themselves through the Strategic Management Initiative. In line with these developments the implementation of an effective performance management development system (PMDS) is among the key objectives of the public service modernisation programme as set out in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness as negotiated by the Government and the Social Partners. Essentially, PMDS is a way of managing each individual’s work performance, career and development needs, by way of a shared understanding about what is to be achieved, how it is to be achieved and an approach to managing and developing people that increases the probability of achieving success. The aim of PMDS is to contribute to continuous improvement across the Office by linking individual performance to the strategy and values of the Office as set out in the Business Plan. Each member of staff received five days training throughout the year in the various phases of PMDS which is now successfully embedded and operational on an annual basis for all staff of the Office.

Public Access and Awareness

During 2001 it was necessary, due to Foot and Mouth Disease restrictions, to curtail the practice of my staff visiting Citizens Information Centres (CICs) and other local centres. However, visits were made to CICs in Limerick, Galway, Portlaoise, Cork, Waterford and Coolock in Dublin and as a result a total of 368 valid complaints were received. Staff from my Office also made visits to Killarney, Tralee, Castlebar, Roscommon and Longford which resulted in a total of 279 valid complaints being received.

New Logo

As part of the process of change and renewal almost every organisation both private and public has developed its own unique corporate identity or branding for all forms of communication. My Office is no exception to this, particularly in the light of the expansion of my responsibilities in recent years to cover Freedom of Information and other areas. During the year we decided to review our letter stationery and other business items. The outcome of the review was a new logo which can be seen throughout this Report. It is a simple design representing our purpose in the matters of openness, fairness and accountability. It will also serve as a constant reminder of the sense of duty which my organisation has towards three of its most important stakeholders viz. the citizen, the public bodies and the Oireachtas. The new logo is transposed on all forms of documentation coming from the Offices of the Ombudsman and Information Commissioner.

Notices issued under Section 7 of the Ombudsman Act, 1980

Each year since 1998 I have published in my Annual Report statistics on the number of Section 7 notices issued by my Office. These notices, which are issued only as a last resort and after a series of verbal and written reminders have issued, are statutory demands for the provision of information to my Office in connection with the examination or investigation of a complaint. My 1998 report recorded a total of 45 notices issued. In subsequent years the totals declined to 27 (1999) and 14 (2000). This year's total of 19 represents a small increase over the previous year and is broken down as follows:

I am concerned that the overall number of notices issued in 2001 has increased and I am particularly disappointed that the Department of Education & Science continues to be at the top of the list and that local authorities continue to account for the bulk of notices issued each year. The message it conveys to me is that these bodies are either unwilling or unable to take steps to address serious delays on their part in the provision of information to my Office.

Relations with local authorities

Following media reports on my comments that I was dissatisfied with the level of response from local authorities to complaints from my Office, I accepted an invitation to meet with the Minister for the Environment and Local Government and gave him an account of the major issues of concern to me in relation to aspects of local government. The Chairman of the County and City Managers’ Association wrote to me and at a meeting with him assured me of the willingness of County and City managers to co-operate with my Office. I had a further meeting with representatives of the Association during the year and agreed a framework on which to build better working relations with my Office. Part of that framework includes providing my staff with opportunities to communicate with significant numbers of local authority staff in a learning/training environment with a view to providing a better level of service to my Office and also to the public. I will continue to meet with representatives of the Association as often as necessary and my Office will continue to urge local authorities to accelerate the pace of administrative reform, including the introduction of internal complaints systems. Such systems, if effective, should reduce the level of complaint to my Office because many complaints would be dealt with at local level in the first instance. Having met representatives of the County and City Managers’ Association, I am reassured by their commitment and I am optimistic that, with their co-operation, the level and quality of service to my Office can be improved in the near future.

During the year new management structures were put in place in local authorities. Directors of Service have been appointed in the main functional areas in order to provide for clearer accountability and responsibility through the abolition of the dual administrative/technical structures. This development should also contribute to improving the level of service to my Office through a more effective use, when necessary, of Directors of Service where previously such an overarching administrative structure did not exist.

Nursing homes subventions - Report of the Ombudsman 2001

During 2001 I continued the practice of submitting to the Oireachtas, reports of investigations of specific issues or areas of public administration. In January 2001 I published my report on my investigation of the payment of nursing home subventions by the health boards. The report examined the operation of the subvention scheme by the health boards, the role of the Department of Health and Children in making regulations and overseeing the introduction and operation of the scheme nationally, and considered the relations between those public bodies and the Oireachtas.

The report identified a failure to allow a pocket money provision in the calculation of the elderly person’s means and the erroneous calculation of family circumstances in the calculation of those means. As a result of my investigation fundamental changes, which mirrored my concerns, were made to the Regulations and appropriate arrears were paid in affected cases.

In the course of the investigation I drew attention to uncertainty surrounding the eligibility of older people for long term residential care.

The definition of in-patient services, as provided at Section 51 of the Health Act, 1970, means institutional services provided for people while maintained in a hospital, convalescent home or home for persons suffering from mental or physical disability, or in accommodation ancillary thereto. As well as covering acute hospital stays, the term self-evidently includes wider categories of service such as the long-stay care of elderly or disabled people. There is a view, therefore, that any elderly person who needs long-stay nursing home type care - which typically includes nursing care, supervision, assistance with daily activities such as feeding and dressing and which may also include services such as physiotherapy or occupational therapy - is entitled to have this service provided by the relevant health board as an aspect of in-patient services. From my consideration of the matter, I came to the view that the relevant legislation provides that everybody resident in the State has an entitlement to be provided with in-patient services, where necessary, by the relevant health board. Where the patient is covered by a medical card then the service should be free of charge. However, in the context of nursing home type care the practice is, invariably, to withdraw the entitlement to the medical card to facilitate the raising of charges.

The Department of Health and Children disputes the view that the Health Acts confer a legally enforceable entitlement to hospital in-patient services. The Department has argued that the law is unclear as to whether people have a statutory right to be provided with nursing home type care by a health board. It adds that the Health Act, 1970 distinguishes between the terms “eligibility” and “entitlement” and that the former, in the context of the Health Act, provides for eligible people to avail of services. However, as the Health Act does not define the manner in which, or the extent to which, in-patient services should be provided, the Department argues that the extent of any health board’s legal obligation in this regard is unclear.

Since the publication of my report the situation has become even more complex with extension of full medical card eligibility to persons normally resident in the State who are not less than seventy years of age. This has resulted in over 67,000 additional individuals becoming so entitled. In November 2001 the Department published Quality and Fairness - A Health System For You, the new national health strategy. Under the National Goal of Fair Access, the strategy provides for the simplification and clarification of entitlement to medical cards. In this context the strategy noted my observations in relation to the eligibility of older people for long-term residential care and confirmed that special attention would be given to these observations in a proposed general review of legislation on entitlement. The strategy provides that new legislation will be enacted to provide for clear statutory provisions on such entitlement with a Bill introduced in 2002. In view of the large number of people who have approached my Office about this matter I intend to look at it again when the legislative proposals have been published.

Passengers with Disabilities Report

In August 2001 I published an investigation report into the refusal by the Revenue Commissioners to grant tax relief on vehicles adapted for the transport of passengers with disabilities. The report gave details of how three carers, responsible for the transport of close family members suffering from a qualifying disability, were refused the tax reliefs available under the Disabled Drivers and Disabled Passengers (Tax Concessions) Regulations, 1994.

Arising out of the investigation I made a number of recommendations which the Revenue Commissioners accepted in full:

• I recommended that each of the three complainants should be regarded by Revenue as eligible for the tax reliefs available, and applied for, under the Regulations.
• In addition, I recommended that documentation relating to the scheme should be reviewed with a view to giving more information on the scheme and that administrative procedures and documentation used in the processing of applications and informing applicants of the result of their applications be urgently reviewed and amended, where necessary, to reflect good administrative practice and the Revenue Commissioners’ own ‘Charter of Rights for Taxpayers’.
• I also recommended that Revenue should carry out a review of other cases where applicants were refused the reliefs available under the Regulations on grounds which were similar to those applicable in the cases investigated.

With regard to the latter recommendation, I asked Revenue to report back to me within six months on progress in regard to implementing this recommendation. The review carried out by the Revenue involved an examination of 10,500 files. Of these, 103 files were selected for further investigation where the circumstances were similar to those applying in the cases investigated.

It emerged that 25 of the persons involved were now deceased. A family member in one of these cases made an approach to Revenue in the light of the publicity which the report had received. Revenue examined the claim and payment was made in full. Revenue also indicated that the remaining 24 cases would be looked at further to see if there was a way in which they could be re-examined in a sensitive manner so as to determine entitlement to the tax reliefs and to enable the families of the person with disabilities to benefit from the scheme.

The remaining 78 cases were examined and divided into two categories. The first category was those applications where there was already sufficient information on file to satisfy the Revenue Commissioners that the grounds for the application were similar to those cases which gave rise to my report. A total of 24 such cases were identified. The remaining 54 cases were those where little or no additional information was available to establish the underlying circumstances of the case. These people were invited to make a case for entitlement in the light of my report.

In addition special arrangements were made by Revenue to deal with repayment of fuel consumed in qualifying vehicles between the date of application and the granting of the relief. Rather than insisting on the production of receipts, as is normally the case, Revenue said arrears due would be agreed informally on the basis of actual vehicle mileage. Insofar as exemption from road tax was concerned arrangements were made with the Department of the Environment and Local Government for appropriate refunds to be made.

Of the cases reviewed Revenue said that while it was not possible to give an exact statement of the amounts involved, based on the current average claim size for disabled passengers, the total repayment involved in respect of those applicants who had so far responded to its approaches under the review was of the order of €590,000 (£464,663). When the review process is finally completed Revenue estimate that the final amount repaid, including fuel repayment and repayment of road tax will be of the order of €850,000 (£669,429).

Visits to the Office

One of the most gratifying aspects of the work of the Office is the high regard with which it is held throughout the European Community and beyond. One consequence of this high regard is the fact that the Office receives requests to provide assistance to other Ombudsman Offices in relation to work practices and operational issues. During the course of 2001 the Office hosted groups from the Office of the Greek Ombudsman, a relatively newly established Office and representatives of the Scottish Local Government Ombudsman, the Scottish Housing Ombudsman’s Office and the Parliamentary Commissioner’s Office for Scotland. During the course of these visits the Office provided detailed briefing on the manner in which we examine complaints, operational issues, human resource management issues, personnel practices and our information technology system with the emphasis on case management. I also met the Deputy Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic and in addition the Office hosted a seminar with a similar theme for a group of Polish students of public administration as part their placements with public bodies in Ireland.

Office of the Appeal Commissioners

In 2001 the Minister for Finance invited submissions from relevant parties on proposed legislation to provide a new statutory footing for the body charged with the hearing of appeals by taxpayers against decisions of the Revenue Commissioners concerning taxes and duties, viz. the Office of the Appeal Commissioners.

The proposed legislation envisaged an expansion of the Commissioners’ role to include appeals against administrative actions or decisions of the Revenue Commissioners. I wrote to the Minister indicating that, if it is the intention to expand the role of the Appeal Commissioners to include appeals relating to administrative actions or decisions of the Revenue Commissioners, then a provision should be made in the proposed legislation which will allow the Ombudsman to examine/investigate complaints relating to such decisions. I pointed out that my Office already has substantial statutory powers to enable it fulfil this role.

Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs - Guide to Complaint Handling

In conjunction with my 1997 Annual Report I published a guide to internal complaint systems. My Office has advised individual public bodies as to how to set up such systems and I am encouraged by the number of public bodies which recognise that effective complaint handling is a necessary part of the delivery of a quality service to their clients.

The Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs recently published a guide to complaint handling for its staff which identifies the benefits of good complaint handling and promotes a positive approach to dealing with complaints. I understand that the production of the guide is to be complemented with a staff training programme and I would like to commend the Department for producing, what, in effect, is a model of best practice which other public bodies could usefully follow.