Department of Justice Customer Charter

< About the Department of Justice < Department of Justice Customer Charter

The Customer Charter tells you about the levels of service and behaviour you can expect from us.

You can expect us to:

• Give you the best possible service and advice.
• Be fair, friendly and sensitive.
• Treat everyone equally across the nine grounds set out in equality law:

- gender

- race

- marital status

- disability

- religion

- age

- sexual orientation

- family status

- membership of the Traveller community.

• Try our best to meet any special needs you may have.

We expect you to help us give a good service by:

• Having your reference number and correct information to hand when talking to us or visiting us
• Treating our staff with respect
• Giving us some feedback to help us improve our services
• Letting us know before you visit our offices if you have any special needs

Telephone

• Our aim is to answer all calls quickly.
• We will tell you our name and where we work.
• We will be polite and helpful, and do our best to give you clear and correct information.

Abusive behaviour on calls

Sometimes customers become upset or frustrated when speaking to us on the phone and this can lead to abusive behaviour. If this happens, we will ask the customer to stop the abusive behaviour so that we can continue the call. If the abusive behaviour continues, we will ask the customer to call back when things have calmed down and then end the call.

Letters and emails

• We will try to acknowledge all letters and emails within five working days.
• We will send you a final response within 20 working days. If we can’t answer your query during this time, we will let you know when you can expect a final response.
• We will include a reference number in our emails and letters if they apply to your query.
• We will give our name and contact details in all letters and emails where appropriate.
• We will write all our emails and letters in a way so that they are easy to read and understand.

Personal callers – if you call to one of our offices

• We will greet you politely.
• We will be fair and helpful and deal with your enquiry as quickly as we can.
• We will protect your privacy.
• We will make sure our offices are accessible for customers with disabilities. (It would help us if you could tell us the kind of supports you might need before you arrive.)
• We ask you to first make an appointment if you need to speak to a particular member of staff. This is to make sure that they will be available to meet you when you visit.

Our Access Officer is Seamus Callagy and he is responsible for providing, arranging and co-ordinating assistance for customers with disabilities who want to access our services.

If you have a disability, please contact the Access Officer if you have concerns about how to access our services. We would be glad to receive your feedback on what is working well or where we could improve services to make them more accessible.

• Email: accessofficer@justice.ie
• Telephone: 01 602 8202

Feedback

We welcome your feedback as a way to help us improve our services. We have a Customer Service Working Group and a Customer Insights Team which will use your feedback to improve customer services. You can make a difference for others by telling us about your experience, views and suggestions. You can contact us at customerservices@justice.ie.

Complaints

We have a complaints procedure if you want to complain about the standard of service we have provided. The system is easy to use. You can make the complaint online or you can ask staff for a paper copy of the complaints procedure.

• Department of Justice Complaints Procedure

Services in Irish

We have staff members throughout the Department who will be happy to provide a service through Irish. If you would like to conduct your business with us through Irish, we will do our best to make this happen.

Seirbhísí i nGaeilge

Tá baill foirne againn ar fud na Roinne a bheidh sásta seirbhís a chur ar fáil i nGaeilge. Más mian leat do ghnó a dhéanamh linn trí Ghaeilge, déanfaimid ár ndícheall a chinntiú go dtarlóidh sé sin.

Audio version: Customer Charter Department of Justice (Audio Version)

ISL version: