Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
21 JULY 2004
MRS NUALA
O'LOAN, MR
SAMUEL POLLOCK,
MR DAVID
WOOD AND
MRS OLWEN
LAIRD
Chairman: Good afternoon
to Mrs O'Loan and to your team. You are very welcome and the Committee
appreciates very much the fact that we had to change the date
because of what was going on last week. I understand you have
had to break into your holiday, for which many apologies, and
you are doubly welcome. We will try and let you go as soon as
we can. Before we start these proceedings Mr Eddie McGrady would
like to make a declaration.
Mr McGrady: Mr Chairman,
members of the Committee and those giving evidence today, I have
to record in the minutes that I am a member of the Police Board
of Northern Ireland, and also the Chairman of the sub-committee
of the Police Board, which deals with human rights and monitoring,
and as such that sub-committee has a primary link with the Office
of the Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. Those are remunerated positions
and therefore I would like to declare that interest and will act
circumspectly in the participation with the police deliberations
in that respect.
Q1 Chairman: Thank you
very much. Obviously Mr McGrady's knowledge and experience is
of great help to us. He thinks it is right that he does not put
questions in this session today and we entirely respect his wishes
in that regard. Mrs O'Loan, would you like to start, briefly,
and tell us about the key problems you have in carrying out your
principle activities?
Mrs O'Loan: Thank
you, Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity to say something
to you. Can I just introduce Mr Pollock, my Chief Executive, Mr
David Wood, my Executive Director of Investigations and Olwen
Laird, our Director of Corporate Services? Tim Gracey is the Director
of Information. I would like to say a word about policing because
I think it is one of the most important and contentious issues
in Northern Ireland today. The establishment of my Office by Parliament
under the Police Act was part of a wider strategy to ensure a
level of accountability and transparency, which was hitherto unknown
anywhere in the world. The commitment of Parliament to that level
of accountability, in terms of the duties and functions conferred
on my Office by Parliament, has been recognised across the world.
Similarly, the commitment of Government in terms of funding has
enabled us to do what we have been established to do. Dr Hayes'
vision in creating this Office was courageous, and we have worked
hard to try to achieve that vision. We do work in a very difficult
political climate; the views of our politicians in relation to
policing are known to be diverse. We have sought to work constructively
throughout the community, and it is a fact that politicians from
every political party represented in this House, under the Northern
Ireland Assembly, bring us constituents who are complainants against
the police. We seek to establish the evidence in relation to each
case in the search for truth. Five years ago it would have seemed
quite unlikely that a police complaints system in Northern Ireland
could have won public confidence, but I think that that is what
has happened. Last January the public confidence figure in our
Protestant community stood at 70% believing we were impartial
and 76% of our Protestant community believing that the police
do a good job. In the Catholic community the figures are even
higher. And 85% of our population believe we are independent and
they are aware of what we do. I think it is very, very important
that we actually do serve the whole community. 48% of our complaints
come from Protestants, 37% from Catholics and 15% from other groups.
Our staff too is representative of the community; 47% of our staff
are Protestant, 37% are Catholic and 16% are from other communities.
Our workload is changing but not diminishing. We have redirected
some resources. We have made structural change because Parliament
has given us new duties. We face further changes. We will have
responsibility for complaints against the new Police Support Officers,
who will assist sworn officers in the fight against crime. We
do hope that eventually we will have a workable power to mediate
complaints, which will reduce the number of complaints we have
to put into investigation. We have other challenges, not least
the complexity of our workload, which range from allegations of
incivility to collusion and murder. It also involves fatal accidents
involving the police. We must respond 24 hours a day, seven days
a week, 365 days a year. That is a significant burden for an office
of 128 people. We do respond; we report with recommendations on
policy and practice, so that the police can make necessary amendments
to their policy and practice, and I think it is true that some
improvements in policing can clearly be attributable to our work.
Our IT infrastructure is now inadequate. We have extensive and
demanding reporting obligations and these are largely dependent
on analysis of material contained in our case management system.
The system lacks many forms of functionality; it does not readily
yield up information. It is vital to our ability to meet our statutory
needs, and we do hope that Government will be able to resource
the procurement of an appropriate system. Finally, may I say that
we are determined that we will do all we can to grow police confidence
in our work. We have participated in many joint activities to
assist officers to know our processes, and to appreciate that
we conduct only a search for evidence as required by the law.
We pay tribute to them for the difficult job which they do and
have done over the years and for the sacrifices which they have
made. I think our vision is a shared vision, that all our people
and all our police officers enjoy the best possible policing and
police complaints service. Northern Ireland is moving forward
in many ways and my staff and I seek to make a contribution to
that process. Thank you for listening to me.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you
very much for that. Those figures are interesting and I think
you score high marks for having achieved that in a relatively
short time. However, do you think the awareness figures are going
to get any better? Dr Ostermeyer of your Office said, "This
levelling off would seem to indicate that a maximum level of public
awareness has been achieved."
Mrs O'Loan: Chairman,
if I may say that we always strive to increase awareness, going
into the communities that we have not been able to access before.
I bow to the statisticians and those who are expert in that matter,
and I accept that we may not get much beyond 85%. I am not so
concerned about the figure when I go out and I meet people because
I am trying more and more, with all my staff, to get into areas
of our community where we have not been able to meet yet.
Q3 Chairman: Can I just
get two small things out of the way? You gave us the breakdown
between Nationalists and Protestant Unionists; what is the breakdown
by sex of your staff?
Mrs O'Loan: It
is 41% female and 59% male as at January 2004.
Q4 Chairman: As far as
equal pay is concerned, do you plan to undertake a review of pay
equality in line with the recent Equality Commission guidance?
Mrs O'Loan: We
have followed all the guidance. When I was appointed we appointed
our staff using the Northern Ireland Civil Service Standard Terms
and Conditions. Gradings were developed in the light of what it
was anticipated the jobs might be. Once we had moved forward and
established ourselves we then brought in BCS—the Business
Consultancy Services—to do a review of all pay and graded
levels, to make sure that that was right. We are at that stage
at the present time; we have carried out the Equality Commission's
requirements in terms of impact assessment for equal opportunities
for our staff in the Office, and the results of that have been
very good.
Q5 Chairman: If I can
pick up one thing you said in your opening statement: that your
IT systems were now inadequate. Is that because there is not enough
of them or because they are out of date?
Mrs O'Loan: They
are out of date. Our remit has changed. Some of those changes
are very small but when you have to feed them into an IT system
and they knock through everything else it becomes very expensive
to try to make the IT system work, and it begins to creak more
and more as you make more amendments. So I think it is just not
capable of doing the job any more.
Q6 Chairman: And you do
not have the funds to replace it?
Mrs O'Loan: No,
I do not.
Q7 Chairman: Have you
asked for them?
Mrs O'Loan: We
have put a case to the Northern Ireland Office.
Q8 Chairman: Did it come
out favourably in the recent spending round or has that not filtered
down to you yet?
Mrs O'Loan: We
have not had a reply, as far as I know.
Mr Pollock: The
case has only been submitted within the last month, and they would
not have had time to consider it.
Q9 Chairman: So that the
first the NIO would know of your IT problems was a month ago?
Mrs O'Loan: No,
Chairman. We have been keeping them informed as we went along
because my Chief Executive under our Management Statement Arrangements
has quarterly meetings with the NIO, and there are discussions
of the problems that we are having at that point.
Q10 Chairman: So how long
ago were the INO warned about this?
Mr Pollock: We
identified it a year ago in our progress reports because at that
stage we were looking at the feasibility in relation to our systems
and we then had to develop the specifications and we had that
tested out through the gateway process. We managed then to submit
the full business case about five weeks ago to the Northern Ireland
Policing Division.
Q11 Chairman: Have you,
as it were, put in a bid for the cost of that?
Mr Pollock: Yes.
Q12 Chairman: What is
the cost?
Mr Pollock: In
capital terms it would be £1.2 million over seven years and
there are also revenue costs that follow the development of the
system, which are again in the region of £1 million.
Q13 Chairman: So how much
in this current spending round of that £1.2 million?
Mr Pollock: £1.2
million.
Q14 Chairman: No, that
is over seven years. How much of that?
Mr Pollock: To
acquire the system, which we would want to do, within the first
year, obviously, that is where the main capital investment would
be.
Q15 Chairman: So the main
amount of that £1.2 million is needed upfront?
Mr Pollock: Yes.
Q16 Mr Luke: On the point
of public awareness, especially amongst the young. Obviously there
seems to be a very low awareness amongst young people and almost
40% of 16-24 year olds were unaware of your Office. That indicates
that you may be failing to reach this group in the community.
What extra measures are you taking to reach young people? How
are you able to measure the results of these measures?
Mrs O'Loan: We
became aware, within a year, on our research base, that young
people were unaware of the Office. Interestingly enough, the age
group 16-24 make the biggest sub-group of our complainants. So
we have had a number of initiatives, some with the police, some
with other groups, with voluntary organisations, aimed at taking
us out to young people, where we can find them and engage with
them. So we have, for example, participated in a series of youth
conferences, jointly organised by the PSNI, Policing Board and
my office, in which we gather together a couple of hundred young
people from different backgrounds; they all come into one central
venue and we all make five to 10 minute presentations, and then
they can engage with us. We also had a youth conference which
we conducted with one of our youth organisations in Northern Ireland.
We go out to schools and we make a lot of school visits; we are
available and we have written to every school in Northern Ireland,
asking them if they want to hear from the Office. At any opportunity
that any of us get we are trying to say to people that we would
love to come along. The proportion of young people who are aware
of us has risen over the three years and the percentage of young
people as a proportion of our complainants is now at 27%—it
was at 23%. I do not think you can draw very much from that because
there are many factors which impact upon who makes a complaint,
but those are the figures. So we are working hard at it. We do
recognise them and we recognise the elderly too as another sub-group
who we need to look after.
Q17 Mr Luke: In regard
to the actual level of the respondents in the survey in public
awareness, only 16% of those respondents who had experienced unacceptable
behaviour by the police said they had complained. Of the remainder,
55% have said that they did not think it worth complaining, or
if they did complain that very little would happen. Why do you
believe that so few people complain?
Mrs O'Loan: I think
that the Policing Board did surveys initially before my Office
started on why people did and did not complain, and one of the
major reasons was that people felt that there was no point. We
know that that figure is reducing. We are still meeting people;
people will approach me in the street and tell me a story and
I say, "You have to come to me, you have to let me deal with
this," and they will say, "No, no, we are afraid, the
police have ways of taking it out on us." Those are the kind
of things that are said to us. That exists. We can show that in
fact—and I stand to be corrected—only 17% of our complainants
are the subjects of related criminal proceedings, the rest are
not engaged in any sort of criminal process with the police. So
when we tell people that kind of thing it can give them the reassurance
that, (a) there is a point; (b) for the police it is important
that if people have a grievance they come to us. Very often the
grievances that people have against the police, on occasion they
can be the result of a lack of understanding or of an expectation
that is actually unreal. A particular issue may be terribly important
to me as an individual, but put in the context of a limited number
of officers on the ground, a fatal road traffic accident, a fire
and something else happening, it may be that my priority is not
the highest priority for the police, and people will come to accept
that. So there are a lot of reasons behind that, but I think that
is changing slightly.
Q18 Reverend Smyth: We
have heard that there has been an awareness of the Office and
the role of the Ombudsman, and yet we have seen research and evidence
which suggests that some 44% of people who have a complaint go
to their local police station and 18% make a complaint to a solicitor.
Only 11% actually come to the Ombudsman.
Mrs O'Loan: I do
not think that is quite right. I hesitate to correct Reverend
Smyth, and I will ask Mr Pollock to deal with this. The figures
initially of people coming to us were very low because we were
just established, but my understanding now is that 34% of complaints
were made directly to the Office in 2001 and by 2003 that percentage
had risen to 48%. About 40% are made via the police, a small percentage
by public representatives, and you obviously have made complaints
to us, and about 12% comes through solicitors. So 48% come directly
to us now. It is an incremental thing and it is bound to be incremental.
Q19 Reverend Smyth: That
is an interesting response because the information that we have
been given is that only 11% said that they would first go to the
Ombudsman, and that they may later on put their minds in a different
direction. Are you satisfied then with those who are coming to
you as a place of first call? In other words, if they have a complaint
against the police and your role is to investigate, do you not
expect a higher number of people coming to you?
Mrs O'Loan: I think
it is about changing behaviour, Chairman. I think that in the
past really the only place you could make a complaint against
the police was to go into your local police station and to make
a complaint there, therefore that is what people have learned
to do. There is a section of the population who would never have
gone into their police station to make a complaint because they
were not places where they felt comfortable. But there is a section
which did go into police stations happily to make their complaints.
You are quite right, that when we started more complaints came
through the police than through us. It is a figure which is changing
quite dramatically; we expect it to continue to change. I think
it is the consequence of the work which we have been able to do
in terms of raising awareness, in terms of letting people know
how to complain. We have to draw the balance, we cannot go out
touting for complaints, that would be wrong, but we must make
ourselves available and accessible and I think that is what we
have tried to do.
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