Managing Unreasonable Behaviour and Contacts

The Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) respects the statutory and human rights of all individuals and is committed to dealing with everyone who contacts us in a fair, impartial and transparent way. We aim to make clear to all people and organisations dealing with GSOC what we can or cannot do regarding their requests for service or information.

We believe that all individuals are entitled to be heard and to be treated with respect. As such, we aim to deal fairly, honestly and consistently with all individuals. We aim to provide a service that is accessible to all individuals. However, sometimes people contact GSOC in a way that causes difficulties for us, for themselves and for other people who use our service. People may use abusive or threatening language when talking to us, they may expect an unreasonable response to a request or may be unusually persistent in their dealings with us. This can hinder us in investigating a complaint efficiently and can cause significant resource issues for us.

We need to consider how the demands made by such contacts impacts on the resources available to us to deal with people and on the welfare and well-being of our staff. Because such difficulties do arise, GSOC retains the right to limit or change a person’s access to our service.

This policy sets out how we intend to deal with behaviour with which we have a difficulty, particularly unusually persistent contacts with the organisation, repeated complaints about issues that have already been dealt with, and any threatening or abusive behaviour.

This policy aims to help our staff to identify situations where the level or the nature of contact from an individual may indicate that an intervention specifically designed to manage our relationship with that individual might be appropriate.

This policy replaces the GSOC Serial Complainant Policy with effect from 22 November 2018.