Organisation information
Public Sector Duty Committee Annual Report 2024
Published on
Last updated on
Published on
Last updated on
Our Public Sector Duty (PSD) Committee is made up of representatives from each area of our Office. Our PSD staff intranet page highlights key Human Rights and Equality-related issues and events and our PSD Committee plans events to mark particular Human Rights and Equality-related events and days.
In keeping with our PSD Action Plan, one of the key objectives of our Statement of Strategy was the introduction of a Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) to Ombudsman complaint handling. The main purpose for adopting this approach was to ensure that Public Service Providers within our remit have regard for the human rights of the individuals they deal with on a daily basis and that the Ombudsman considers whether the relevant PSP have due regard for that individual(s) or family’s human rights as part of our investigation of their complaint.
During 2023 we made significant progress on this objective by providing Human Rights training for our staff. We further progressed our objective in 2024 by completing and launching a comprehensive guide for our staff to assist them in considering the actions and decisions of public bodies, through a human rights lens. Our Staff Guide is available on the PSD Section of the Strategy & Governance page on our website.
During 2024 the Office reviewed the effectiveness and reach of our existing Transition Year (TY) programme. In keeping with our PSD goals, an emphasis was placed on developing a programme which would increase access to and representation among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Office reached out to the Trinity Access Programme (TAP), which aims to widen access and participation at third-level for underrepresented groups. TAP run a TY programme with participants from 21 schools, 17 of which are DEIS schools and 4 are schools in areas that have been identified as has having a low turnover to higher education.
We looked at TY Programmes in other Government Departments and Ombudsman Offices to see how our existing TY programme could be improved to provide more engaging and interactive activities, and thereby a more beneficial experience to students. We formed a cross-office group to take responsibility for developing and delivering the revised programme. TAP also provided advice and guidance in organising and planning workshops for students.
In February 2025, 11 students participated in the Office of the Ombudsman’s revised TY Programme. Five were related to staff of our office and six attended from DEIS schools through TAP. Rather than the previous presentation-based programme, students participated in a series of workplace skills sessions that aimed to develop key soft skills from the civil service competency framework such as analysis and written communication, verbal communication, teamwork, etc. Each session focussed on the work of a different statutory body or section in our office and explored some of the pressing political and social issues facing Ireland at present.
We believe the revised TY programme will be an effective vehicle through which to increase awareness among disadvantaged communities about our Office and the various ways in which it can assist such communities. This will help to achieve our strategic objective of reaching out to disadvantaged communities and at the same time also fostering our PSD objectives.
One of the key objectives of the PSD Committee’s Action Plan is to identify actions which might help to identify sectors of the community that we may not be reaching. In 2023 we developed some proposals as to how the Office might collect personal data from people who submitted complaints to the Ombudsman in order to ascertain who is making complaints to the Ombudsman and, also, who may not be aware of our service. In 2024, the Office launched its demographic survey. The survey is voluntary and anonymous and is compared to the National Census to allow us to make meaningful comparisons with the national population and in keeping with our PSD commitments helps us to ensure that our information campaigns are targeted towards ‘underrepresented’ and/or hard to reach groups.
During 2024, we organised interesting and relevant learning presentations for our staff in conjunction with International Women’s Day, Europe Day & World Suicide Day. We also held a number of events surrounding Pride Month (June) and Deaf Awareness Week (September).
The PSD is pleased to report that all six of the statutory bodies in our Office were found by IHREC to be fully compliant with Section 42 of the IHREC Act, in that we had produced a PSD plan and had reported on our progress in each of our annual reports.