Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-68)
21 JULY 2004
MRS NUALA
O'LOAN, MR
SAMUEL POLLOCK,
MR DAVID
WOOD AND
MRS OLWEN
LAIRD
Q60 Mr Tynan: How do you
respond to the allegation of the Police Federation that states
that several of their members have no confidence in the present
system of accountability?
Mrs O'Loan: As
I have told you, we have received from police officers 20 complaints,
a total since we opened of about 40. We have dealt with each of
them. They have all had the right to come back to us or to go
back to the Secretary of State. When we are dealing with complaints
by police officers, we deal also with the Federation or the Superintendents'
Association, whichever, because they represent the officer to
us. We have satisfied them in our dealing with the complaints
that we have dismissed a member of staff on the foot of a police
officer's complaint. We have disciplined; we have retrained officers,
and all that on the foot of 40 complaints. We take complaints
very seriously because I think, if we seek to judge the integrity
and the professionalism of others, we must do all we can to try
and see that our staff do their job professionally.
Q61 Mr Tynan: Obviously
it is vitally important for people to have confidence in your
office. Does the fact that the Police Federation state that some
of their members feel as they do concern you? How would you rectify
that?
Mrs O'Loan: It
does concern me. It always concerns me if police officers feel
unhappy about the office in any respect. What we are attempting
to do is to go round at the lowest level possible in groups and
just to talk to people. That is hard to arrange. I asked the MSU
Commander in a particular area, "Can I come and talk to your
mobile support units?" Those are the operational support
units and they go in Land Rovers when there is a problem. "Yes
of course you can", he replied. It was arranged and then
I received a phone call to say, "Sorry, we have been called
out". We have been unable to arrange it since. I do not think
that is any reflection on them; it is just the pressures on policing.
We are trying to engage with the police because I think they should
understand the process and understand that at the end of the day
there is a mechanism for independent investigation by the Secretary
of State, by an independent person appointed by the Secretary
of State, and there are all these other mechanisms; there are
at least 12 mechanisms for scrutinising our office.
Mr Wood: For the
complaints that have been made by the police there is the single
point of contact, the Police Federation, and they come through
them to us. I have actually spoken to their representative on
many occasions on this subject. There is not one complaint that
has been made through the Police Federation that they would not
say has not been satisfactorily resolved at the end of the day.
There are not a lot of aggrieved complainants out there who have
complained to your office about the behaviour of our staff and
remain dissatisfied with how it has been dealt with.
Q62 Mr Tynan: Would you
welcome Dr Hayes's suggestion that your office should be placed
under the jurisdiction of the Assembly on this point?
Mrs O'Loan: I think
there are difficulties there because police and justice are not
matters which are devolved to the Assembly in the first instance,
so it just could not be done at the present time. I think it is
a matter for Parliament to decide. I do not honestly think it
is a matter for me, but you then have to look at what an ombudsman
is and what the process is. All the decisions which I make are
recommendations, not decisions. I recommend to the Director of
Public Prosecutions that a police officer should be prosecuted.
The Director of Public Prosecutions is a totally independent officer
and he decides. He has, if you like, a review; he sends papers
out to counsel; he determines whether what I have presented to
him is right, and he makes the decision. If you like, there is
an appeal already in there. If a police officer is prosecuted,
then he appears in court. If he is convicted, he has a right of
appeal all the way through the normal criminal process. On the
disciplinary side, I make recommendations to the Chief Constable
for disciplining of officers. The situation is that those are
recommendations. The Chief Constable can reject them, and there
have been a few occasions where he has rejected them. In some
of them, I have accepted that reaction; it may be, for example,
on the grounds that the officer is ill, and there are various
other circumstances which mean it is inappropriate to take action
against the officer at this time, so I have accepted those.
Q63 Mr Tynan: Can I take
it that your answer is "no", you would not welcome that?
Mrs O'Loan: I just
think you have to look at the proportionality. You have to look
at the function of an ombudsman and you have to see what you are
dealing with. I do not make final decisions. I make decisions
which are referred to other people—the Chief Constable or
the Director of Public Prosecutions. Against each of those decisions,
there is then an appeal process. The Policing Board recently have
agreed that, given that, they feel that is an appropriate level.
Q64 Mr Tynan: I understand
the process. There has been a recommendation. I was asking you
if you would be happy with that under the Assembly Ombudsman.
I understand that it is not devolved. Obviously this suggestion
has been made and the direct question was: would you be happy
with that?
Mrs O'Loan: Mr
Tynan, I will do what Parliament requires me to do. I do not think
it is a matter of me being happy or unhappy. I will do what Parliament
requires me to do, and I will do it graciously and willingly.
I do not want to be seen or to be perceived to be saying "yes"
or saying "no" because I do not think that is my role.
My role is to carry out the function, to explain to you the issues,
to explain the numbers, and to leave you to make the decisions.
Q65 Mr Hepburn: Legislation
has meant that you have acquired new powers and duties. How has
this increased the financial and staffing problems and pressures
on your office?
Mrs O'Loan: The
office was established in 2000. When we were established in 2000,
one of the things we did was go round looking at what policing
costs. Dr Maurice Hayes did this too. We were established with
a budget of about £3.5 million. Hayes said that the cost
of running RUC complaints handling under the old system was about
£6 million in 1996 or 1997, so we have a lower budget. It
very rapidly became clear that the budget which had been allocated
to the office initially was totally inadequate for what the government
was asking us to do. There was a re-evaluation of the functions
of the office in 2002 and the budget went up then. Since then,
it has simply more or less kept pace with inflation; it has increased
slightly. Although we have new powers and new duties, the level
of complaints has gone down, so we have diverted people into quality
assurance or research and things like that to try and make the
best use of the resources we have and to meet our statutory duties.
We do have a delay in dealing with some of our retrospective cases.
We are not funded to do that at the present time. I have not made
a further application. We will do them as best we can under the
funding which we have. People understand that.
Q66 Mr Hepburn: We are
informed that the key performance indicators are missing from
the present annual report. Does that not make it difficult to
compare year-on-year?
Mr Pollock: We
have established objectives and targets and we have addressed
those from last year. We have also produced a corporate plan for
this incoming year and the goals for the next three years.
Mrs O'Loan: I think
the corporate plan contains the measurement against objectives
that you are looking for.
Mr Pollock: I refer
you to pages 47 and 49 in terms of the progress and achievement
of objectives.
Q67 Mr Clarke: I just
wanted to give you the opportunity to place on record the concerns
that you have expressed in your submission and in your annual
report in respect of your ability to investigate historic matters.
We do not know what those historic matters are but it would seem
that they are sensitive and that they will also be very time-consuming
and resource-heavy. However, we have heard many times that we
cannot move forward until we deal adequately with the past. Would
you comment on what your concerns are in respect of investigating
those historic matters and when you feel the Ombudsman will be
in a position to carry out those investigations and start to provide
answers for members of the community that may be concerned?
Mrs O'Loan: We
started to provide answers. The first retrospective investigation
I did was into the death of Mr Sammy Devenny in 1969 and I published
that in 2001, so we have been doing that from very early on. There
are difficulties in doing retrospective investigations. Very often,
particularly with the older ones, there were joint police and
army activities. I can investigate the police but I cannot investigate
the army. That is fine by me but it does mean that there are situations
in which the army will sometimes provide us with information but
I have no right to information as I have a right to information
from the police. Some of the retrospective investigations are
actually dealt with very quickly but I never know, when somebody
comes to me and tells me the story of a death, quite what is going
to come when we begin to investigate it. Some of them we have
been able to deal with within one month or two months; others
are queuing up, and we have 15 queuing up at the moment. There
are those concerns. I think it is part of a wider problem that
Northern Ireland has to resolve. I do not have the solutions to
that. I am quite happy to engage in the debate but I do not have
the solutions.
Q68 Mr Clarke: I think
what you have just said in respect of the complexities of army-police
relationships and receiving information is very helpful to us
and it may be something we can put in our report, Chairman.
Mr Wood: We have
not been resourced for retrospective inquiries. We have restructured,
as we get some flexibility within the budgets in any way, to direct
resources to that. Indeed, a great deal of our investigative resource
is directed towards that type of larger inquiry. We have to prioritise
and deal with matters as we get the resources with perhaps more
complaints coming through the door. It is a difficulty for us.
We acknowledge, as Mrs O'Loan said, the difficulties on the public
purse and we are getting through them. As you have acknowledged,
this is resource-intensive, complicated by history and the time
they go back, and they do take some time to resolve.
Mrs O'Loan: The
really complicating factor is that the forensic science lab was
blown up, lots of police stations were blown up, a lot of evidence
has gone, people have died, memories have changed, locations have
changed. Those investigations are difficult. We always tell people
at the beginning, "It may be that we will be able to present
you with an incomplete picture of what happened and that may be
all we can do". I want them to understand right from the
very beginning that we will do what we can within our powers and
our remit but that there may be limitations on what we can find
for them.
Chairman: Mrs O'Loan,
thank you to you and your team very much indeed for being with
us. You have been an enormous help and I hope that when we report,
we may be of some help to your office, too.
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