Irish people prove adept at complaining to the EU ombudsman

IRISH people are proving to be good at complaining at EU level when they have a problem.

The European Ombudsman’s annual report shows he received a higher ratio of complaints from Ireland than most EU member states, even though these totalled just 47 last year.

Among them is the first complaint dealt by the ombudsman’s office in Irish. It came from Stadus, Conradh na Gaeilge’s campaign to make Irish an official working EU language, which happened on January 1 this year. Last July, they emailed the European Council as Gaeilge lobbying for a new status for the language. However, 10 days later they received a reply in English.

As a result of the Ombudsman’s intervention a new reply was sent in Irish together with an apology.

Irish complaints last year made up 1.2% of the 3,830 complaints the ombudsman received, although Ireland has just 0.9% of the EU population of 500 million. Luxembourg, home to 0.1% of EU citizens, had the highest ratio of percentage of the total complaints to percentage population of the EU. The Irish were eighth of 27 nationalities.

Some of these queries were referred by Irish ombudsman Emily O’Reilly.

Most complaints ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros got last year came from the public, with the rest from companies. A quarter of complaints about EU institutions related to a lack of transparency in EU administration, including refusal of information, while the rest were about delayed payments, abuse and discrimination and even rudeness on the telephone.

The largest number of complaints were against the European Commission. The ombudsman said this was understandable as this was the agency the public tended to deal with most.