Procedures Intervention or Report
If a member of the public is dissatisfied with the result of an internal complaints procedure by an administrative authority, or with the way such an authority deals with a complaint, he has a year in which to ask the National Ombudsman to investigate. The Ombudsman can deal with the request in two ways. The first is to launch a detailed investigation of the case. First of all, his staff will assemble the facts of the incident. They may carry out a site inspection or interview the people involved by telephone or face to face. Questions will be put to the complainant, the administrative authority and the official concerned. They have an obligation to provide information. Both sides then have an opportunity to comment on each other's answers. Through the operation of this ‘right of reply' the National Ombudsman eventually arrives at a decision on the actions under investigation. The investigation ends with the publication of a report (with names removed). The National Ombudsman's reports are in the public domain and may be brought to the attention of the media.
The second way of dealing with a complaint is to intervene directly to try to solve the complainant's problem. In this case, the National Ombudsman will contact the administrative authority and see whether there is any prospect of achieving a swift solution. If the result is satisfactory, the case will be closed by sending the complainant a letter explaining the outcome. This approach is used mainly when problems can easily be sorted out (e.g. by getting the authority to answer a letter) or where it is important to the complainant's well-being that the National Ombudsman should find a rapid solution to the problem.