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Complaints against the General Register Office

Findings

The GRO is an organisation which, because of the nature of the service it provides, has a high level of interaction with the public. Public bodies are obliged to have Customer Service Action Plans in place to assist in the achievement of the highest standards with regard to the provision of these services. In the case of the GRO however, the Customer Service Action Plan (which can be viewed at www.groireland.ie) is not, as might be expected, tailored to suit its unique and varied core activities. It has rather, adopted a generic plan which has been devised by the Department of Health and Children and is applicable to all bodies under the aegis of the Department. In addition, given that the plan was meant to cover the period 2003 - 2004, it is now clearly out of date.

In the cases which are the subject of this report it is evident that there were problems associated with responding to complainants and in providing information. The adverse affect deriving from these actions was exacerbated by the fact that the issues in respect of which information and clarity were being sought from the GRO were of an extremely sensitive and deeply personal nature. This was clearly brought home to me by the complainants who felt that in their dealings with the GRO, the focus was not directed on dealing with their individual concerns, but on justifying and defending the stand taken by the GRO in relation to the issues of concern.

The core function of my Office is to protect individuals who avail of public services from unfair, unsound and unjust actions on the part of those who are entrusted to deliver those same services. In order for me to carry out my statutory role, I expect that public bodies will co-operate fully with my Office, to comply with agreed liaison arrangements and give every assistance in relation to the examination and investigation of complaints. In the cases referred to in this report there are instances where the GRO has failed to meet these standards and this failure has impacted detrimentally on my Office's capacity to carry its statutory functions in relation to the complaints received. In addition as a consequence if the actions of the GRO, the individuals who complained to me have experienced a great deal of stress and inconvenience, in, for example, not being able to record the correct details relating to the birth of their children, having doubts cast upon the legitimacy of their marriages and not being able to marry their partners when they wished to do so.

As I said in my introduction to this report, I fully acknowledge the importance of the role played by the GRO in the administration of the civil registration service and that, in the vast majority of cases, this service is delivered in an efficient and competent manner. However, based on my experience from the examination of these complaints I find that there were shortcomings in the service provided by the GRO to these complainants through its

• failure to respond promptly to enquiries;
• unwillingness to provide clarity or helpful informations in its responses;
• lack of sensitivity to the needs of the complainants;
• failure to learn from those decisions of the courts in cases, where evidence not acceptable to the GRO for the purposes of recognising a divorce had later been readily accepted by the courts;
• unwillingness to raise legislative issues for review by the Department of Health and Children;
• failure to observe agreed liaison arrangements with my Office.

Progress in relation to developments under the Civil Registration Modernisation Programme is ongoing. A significant event in the Programme was the enactment of the Civil Registration Act, in February, 2004. One of the key provisions in the Act is at Part 8, Section 60 of the Act, (Appendix 4) which enables the Minister for Health and Children to make regulations in relation to the establishment of an appeals mechanism and the procedures to be followed in relation to the processing of appeals. However, at the time of writing, no such regulations have been made.

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