Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Chambers): I welcome Margaret Kelly, the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman (NIPSO), and Sean Martin, the acting deputy ombudsman. I invite you to brief the Committee.

Ms Margaret Kelly (Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman): Good morning, Alan. We thank the Committee for giving us the opportunity to brief you. As Rodney said in the previous session, it is nice to welcome new faces to the Committee. We look forward to working with you over the next year.

On 8 May, we wrote to the Committee setting out the Main Estimates for 2025-26 for NIPSO, which were, in general, as had been agreed by the Committee through the process. There was a resource departmental expenditure limit (DEL) budget of £5·15 million, which was broken down into £4·95 million of non-ring-fenced resource DEL and £200,000 of ring-fenced resource DEL. We had no capital request in our budget.

We can broadly confirm that the Estimates are consistent with the 2025-26 NIPSO budget that the Committee had agreed previously. We did, however, draw the Committee's attention to an additional reconciling item, which was a £37,000 depreciation. That adjustment arose through communication between the Department of Finance and NIPSO. DOF decided to retain all bodies' ring-fenced DEL allocations for 2024-25 and said that the matter would then be addressed in in-year monitoring. That is why the figure is slightly different. It is our understanding that the £37,000 depreciation, which we had highlighted but which was not included in the Main Estimates, will now be addressed in the June monitoring round. That is how it has been treated for this set of Main Estimates. In broad terms, the budget is as was agreed by the Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr Chambers): It is as it was.

Ms Kelly: Yes.

Do you want to add anything, Sean?

Mr Sean Martin (Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman): No. That is fine.

The Chairperson (Mr Chambers): Thanks for that, Margaret. Members, have you any questions? They are shaking their heads. There you go. You are free to go and enjoy the sunshine. [Laughter.]

Perhaps not. You may be going straight back to the office to work hard.

Ms Kelly: To get some proper work done. [Laughter.]

Alan, it is lovely to see you back. We look forward to working with the Committee throughout 2025-26.

The Chairperson (Mr Chambers): As I said to the previous witnesses, we appreciate all that you do. Thank you very much.

Ms Kelly: Thank you.