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for tax payers. The Inland Revenue, our revenue commissioners the
people who charge tax had decided if you made a mistake when you
are submitting your tax return and you owed many money it didn’t
matter how long ago it was you had to give them all of that money
back but they made a mistake they only give you some of it and took
too much of your money they only give you some of your money back.
Many of you would be familiar with tax regimes of this kind and we
have of course a tax ombudsman in the front raw with us today a
colleague from Pakistan. The fact was the ombudsman did not think
this was fair and when he went to parliament it was considered by a
committee of the parliament, the parliament didn’t think it was fair
either and the tax payers got their money back, so that was one case
where there was a very satisfactory outcome. However Niciforos’
successor as European ombudsman and my predecessor as Irish
ombudsman Emily O’Reilly brought out a report into a scheme called
Lost At Sea which was designed to compensate and families for the
loss of their livelihood when their fishing boat was sunk in an accident
and only one family benefited from this scheme a family which was
in the same constituency as the minister who introduced it. Nobody
else who applied succeeded in getting a grand. Purely accidently! Yes.
Emily O’Reilly brought out a report saying this was wrong and the
government of the day actually laid that report before the houses 3 rd INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTIONS
of parliament the government of the day prevented a debate on the
report, they used their majority in the parliament to prevent a debate.
It was not refer to a committee.
There was a public outcry Emily was as many ombudsman are not very
adopt at going to the press and she got very extensive coverage and in
fact the Irish Times that the main newspaper in Ireland said from the start
it was clear there would be no agreement but they said that the debate
about the ombudsman report on the Lost at Sea scheme was highly
charged would be euphemistic at best. It was verbal gauging at its most
political with a clear division between government and opposition. So, it
led to a very bitter debate in parliament and eventually the report was
referred to a committee but even after it was referred to a committee it
wasn’t upheld. And that report remains to this day not upheld.
Emily introduced two other reports which I think are important in
terms of why ombudsman’s reports are not upheld and we’ve heard

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