Camilla Contract soldier Camp Oksbøl 76 CASE NO. 17/01707 CASE NOS. 17/02604 AND 17/03132 ‘I can’t take it anymore, I’m living in an inferno of pain, fatigue and failing memory’, a 56-year-old woman wrote to the municipality when she was offered a rehabilitation programme for the second time. The woman suffered from degenerative joint disease and had also developed depression and anxiety. The Danish Agriculture and Fisheries Agency reject­ ed financial support to a number of projects intended to boost sales of fish. The Agency wrote that the ap­ plicants could appeal to the Agency itself within four weeks. The Agency would then send on the appeals to the then Complaints Centre for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries. The municipality rejected disability pension as an op­ tion even though the woman’s doctor assessed that she had no working capacity and that a work ability test would aggravate her health issues. The Nation­ al Social Appeals Board agreed with the municipali­ ty: information other than from the doctor had to be taken into account when a citizen’s working capacity was to be assessed. Therefore, it was not to be ruled out that a work ability test might help the woman in the right direction. The Ombudsman did not find that he could help the woman. As Ombudsman, he did not have the qualifi­ cations to consider the expert assessments and con­ siderations on which the decision was based. The Ombudsman is a law graduate and deals pre­ dominantly with legal matters. Normally, he can­ not consider medical expert assessments or make a thorough investigation of the assessments which authorities have carried out in accordance with the rules. The applicants appealed to the Agency, which after almost eight months upheld the refusals. However, the Agency did not forward the appeals to the Com­ plaints Centre as stated. The Ombudsman sent the cases to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is responsible for fisheries, in order for the Ministry to consider if the appeals had been dealt with correctly. The jurisdiction of the Ombudsman extends to all parts of the public administration. The subjects of the cases he processes are therefore wide-ranging. CASE NO. 17/00431 ‘I strongly disagree that I should not be entitled to get access to information about myself’, a woman wrote. The National Social Appeals Board had denied her access to a letter which her mother had written to the Board some years earlier. The letter was about the woman’s son, who was given up for adoption in the 1970s. As grounds for the refusal, the National Social Ap­ peals Board had stated that the letter contained in­ formation about the private circumstances of other individuals. The National Social Appeals Board had not, howev­ er, considered if the woman was entitled to access to the information about herself in the letter. Therefore, the Ombudsman sent the case to the National Social Appeals Board. After this, the woman was granted access to parts of her mother’s letter. One of the Ombudsman’s essential powers accord­ ing to the Ombudsman Act is to make statements – where relevant with criticism of or recommenda­ tions to au­thorities. In practice, however, many cases are resolved in a more flexible way.