The shabby, unreasonable treatment of older people by Government agencies and health authorities provided the central thread in the Ombudsman's report, which was published yesterday.
Even after 20 years in existence, the work of the Office of Ombudsman brings a quiet glow of satisfaction when administrative wrongs are set to right and ordinary citizens triumph over bureaucracy.
Elderly citizens are seen in a negative light by officialdom, the Ombudsman and Information Commissioner Emily O'Reilly observed and are seen as a problem in terms of the provision of health services, social welfare and nursing home care. She expected an increase in the number of complaints made to her office on these issues. And she was critical of the way elderly citizens are forced into private nursing homes, at great expense to their families, with minimal subvention from the State. She expected the courts would have to resolve the matter.
It has been a slow, uphill struggle in making the administrative system more accountable for its actions. And a considerable distance remains to be travelled. In that regard, the Ombudsman has asked the Oireachtas to play a far more active role in reviewing secondary legislation/ministerial regulations before they become law. Many of the most serious and systemic complaints dealt with by her office, she said, had resulted from faulty ministerial regulations and it was time to address this weakness in our system of government.
The mechanism complained about is a flexible, lazy way of doing business. Ministers introduce primary legislation, setting out the basic provisions of a Bill, and these matters are fully debated in the Oireachtas. But the Bill invariably allows ministers to introduce later changes, provided they are notified to the Dáil and Seanad. Through this process, the legislation is fine-tuned over a period of time. But the changes are rarely debated.
Some years ago, because of an increase in the amount of legislation coming from the European Union, a special committee on European Affairs was established by the Dáil to review all such matters. A similar process should now be introduced in relation to home-grown, secondary legislation/ministerial regulations. Departments should be obliged to advise relevant Dáil committees, in adequate time, of the changes proposed and their likely impact, so that they can be fully debated. At the moment, there is talk of Dáil reform in the air and this is an area calling out for attention. Because of the ending of their dual mandate and the provision of special parliamentary researchers, TDs should now have the time and the facilities to do the job.