More than a quarter of reports compiled by the office of the parliamentary ombudsman since 2018 remained ignored, a Times of Malta exercise has revealed.

According to statistics obtained from the ombudsman’s office on his reports and those of the three commissioners for education, environment and planning and health, the public administration ignored an average of 27 per cent of the conclusions.

Recommendations made in an average of five per cent of reports were only partially implemented while just over 67 per cent of the reports saw their recommendations implemented.

In 2018, 25 of the 88 reports were ignored, seven were partially implemented while the public authorities acted on 56 of the reports. A year later, 26 of the ombudsman’s reports were implemented, four were partially implemented while six were ignored.

Last year, the public authorities implemented 71 per cent of the ombudsman’s reports while 18 reports – accounting for the remaining 29 per cent – were ignored.

So far this year, the ombudsman concluded 47 reports, 30 of which saw their recommendations implemented while 16 have so far been ignored. Recommendations of one report were only partially implemented.

Reports compiled by the ombudsman and the three commissioners falling under his office are not made public so there is no way to ascertain which reports were ignored and which were not.

The reports make it to the public domain once released by one of the parties involved.

Civil service disputes figures

In a right of reply, the public administration disputed the calculations and argued that "all but 1.5%" of recommendations made by the Ombudsman had been implemented since 2018. 

"When one considers the number of cases that are referred to the Ombudsman, this translates to an approximate 0.003%. By itself, this is already a clean bill of health for the Public Administration. 

"Translated into figures since 2018, the Ombudsman considered an average of 311 cases annually. 60% of these finish up without being investigated by the Ombudsman. We are then left with 115 cases, or 12%, which have been closed with a recommendation forwarded to the Public Service. All but 1.5% of these recommendations were implemented," it said. 

"That is a far cry from the 25% non-implementation rate quoted by the Times of Malta."

What is the Ombudsman's office?

The office of the ombudsman was set up in 1995 as an independent officer of parliament, appointed by the president.

His function and that of the commissioners is to investigate complaints and resolve grievances that individuals allege to have experienced when dealing with government departments and public authorities.

However, the reports do not only deal with the complaints only from a strictly legal viewpoint.

If the ombudsman concludes that the action complained of, though conforming to a law or practice, was unreasonable, unjust, oppressive or improperly discriminatory, he can recommend adequate redress and make recommendations to rectify the injustice and to reconsider any law on which it is based.

The ombudsman often acts as a mediator between the aggrieved citizen and the public authority. His investigation is often concluded by a final opinion and formal recommendations to redress the justified complaint but many complaints are resolved informally during the course of the investigation.

If the public entity ignores his recommendation, the ombudsman forwards the report to parliament for action but, even there, the reports remain largely ignored.

In 2019, Ombudsman Anthony Mifsud lamented that the House of Representatives was sleeping on investigation reports handed over for remedial action.

In a report, he had said that a number of opinions had been sent to the parliamentary speaker following negative response from the public authorities to requests to implement his recommendations. However, his office remained with “no response whatsoever” as none of the reports were actively considered by the House.

“One can safely conclude that this statutory procedure provided for in the Ombudsman Act, which was meant to be a final safeguard to provide redress against injustice to aggrieved citizens, is proving to be ineffective,” he said.

“This needs to be remedied.”