Arrears of £15 million will be paid to more than 4,000 welfare recipients as the result of an Ombudsman's office investigation, and at least £500,000 will be recouped by house-buyers who have overpaid their local authority loans. These are among the major features of the Ombudsman's 1998 report.
The overpayments to local authorities were uncovered by the Ombudsman, Mr Kevin Murphy, as the result of a complaint by a pensioner against Meath County Council. He had obtained a housing loan for £2,500 in 1991 and was still repaying it by standing order in March 1998, 22 months after it had been fully redeemed. The total overpaid was £683.
Suspecting a more widespread "systemic deficiency" in the county council administration, Mr Murphy ordered an investigation that uncovered six similar cases.
His office is now in the process of looking at other local authorities, and he has so far uncovered 3,200 cases of overpayment involving £310,000.
With half the local authorities still to be investigated, including all of the larger bodies, Mr Murphy says that the final figure is "likely to be at least £500,000". However, the Ombudsman said the complainant should have known that the period of the loan had expired. When Meath County Council offered to repay the loan and bank charges, but not the interest on the £683, Mr Murphy considered the offer "reasonable".
For all its faults, Meath County Council did at least co-operate with the Ombudsman's office. For the first time, Mr Murphy has produced a list of public bodies that failed to co-operate adequately with his investigations and had Section 7 notices issued against them. He issued 45 statutory notices requiring various organisations to produce information required by a set date.
At the top of the list was the Department of Agriculture and Food, which had 13 Section 7 notices issued against it. This was 7 per cent of the total number of valid complaints. The complaints related mainly to livestock grants.
Another Government Department to receive notices was Education and Science, and the Revenue Commissioners also received one Section 7 notice.
Mr Murphy singled out the Department of Agriculture and Food for its lack of co-operation and for not being "focused on the client". However, he welcomed the establishment of a new appeals procedure in the Department and conceded that "some sections are better than others".
The most unco-operative public bodies were local authorities. Section 7 notices had to be issued in a third of the complaints against Clonmel Corporation and Wexford County Council, 19 per cent of complaints against Mayo County Council and 17 per cent of complaints against Roscommon County Council.
Wexford Corporation, Galway County Council, Ballina Urban District Council and Sligo County Council all had Section 7s issued against them in more than 10 per cent of investigations.
In contrast, some agencies which had to deal with a large volume of complaints, such as the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs, were complimented by Mr Murphy on their level of co-operation.
He said the complexity of the system and the high level of staff turnover in the Civil Service meant that his own staff "now have an expertise that Department staff don't always have".
The investigation by the Ombudsman into lost contributory pension arrears, begun two years ago, had resulted in the law being changed and an extra £10 million being allocated in this year's Budget to help meet the cost of these entitlements.
Mr Murphy estimated the cost to the Exchequer would be about £15 million to the end of this year and there would be a continuing additional cost of between £3.5 million and £4 million a year.
The payments involve about 4,000 people who had not claimed contributory pensions as pensioners, widows or widowers for a number of years. Traditionally, the Department paid a maximum of six months' arrears. Now full retrospection will apply and, in the case of dead applicants, the money can be paid to their estate.
As usual Telecom Eireann featured prominently in the report. Out of 237 complaints dealt with in 1998, only 47 were resolved and assistance was provided in another 44. One was withdrawn, 31 discontinued and 114 not upheld.
Mr Murphy said a major source of complaint was the long delay that sometimes followed the payment of connection fees. He understood Telecom's reluctance to admit it could not meet demand, but people had a right to be informed of the reasons for the delay. The company had also agreed to provide a credit of £10 per month to customers for delays, even when these were due to factors outside its control.
Continuing problems with the school transport system also drew Mr Murphy's criticism. He said public confidence had been undermined over the past two to three years because there was no formal scheme in place. Criteria used to make decisions were unclear. In some cases there had been ministerial interventions to make exceptions to the general rules.