One superficial sign of political change in Northern Ireland comes in the shape of a smart new building opposite St Anne's Cathedral, just a few minutes walk from Belfast's busy shopping district.

The offices of the first Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, the independent body which has recently begun handling complaints about the RUC, couldn't be more inviting if a "welcome" mat was placed outside the door. The modern, friendly set-up is the antithesis of the imposing RUC stations, in the past the first port of call for those who felt mistreated by the police in Northern Ireland.

It's no coincidence that the new building is filled with light and decorated with potted plants. "We wanted it to be accessible, we wanted it to be approachable," says Northern Ireland's first Police Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, sitting in her office overlooking the cathedral.

That's ombudsman, by the way, not ombudswoman or even ombudsperson. Despite her protestations, some people still insist on putting a politically correct twist on the word ombudsman, which, she explains, is Scandinavian in origin and means "one who represents". "To change it would distort the original meaning," she says. Some cynics viewed O'Loan's appointment to the post more than a year ago as an act of supreme political correctness on the part of Security Minister Adam Ingram. Not only was this high-profile, £75,000 sterling-a-year job given to a woman, but to an English-born Catholic woman at that. Given the poor relationship between the RUC and many from the nationalist and Catholic community, the symbolism of the appointment was difficult to ignore.

O'Loan, a former member of the Northern Ireland Police Authority, is careful when commenting on the perception of the RUC in the North among those who share her religious background. "There are suggestions that there are some communities whose relations with the police are less happy than others, shall we say, and I want to establish whether that is fact and what underlines it," she says.

She applied for the job the second time it was advertised, after friends suggested her skills and experience would be well suited to the post. "I never thought I would get it though," she says.

A glance through her CV explains why she did. For most of the past 10 years, she has dealt with people and their problems, either in her role as chairman of the Northern Ireland Consumer Committee for Electricity or as convenor of the General Consumer Council's transport and energy group or as complaints officer for the Northern Health and Social Services Board. Between 1991 and 1997, she was a voluntary lay visitor to police stations, where she had access to those in custody, examining how they were treated in police cells. Since 1986, she has also been involved in voluntary marriage counselling and preparation for marriage.

The day job for this consumer champion was as senior law lecturer at the University of Ulster. She taught many police officers during her time there.

The office of ombudsman replaced the Independent Commission for Police Complaints, and a system in which the public's grievances against police were investigated by RUC officers themselves. Was this system adequate?

"I think the police service is a complex organisation which has gone through an extraordinary experience. As an organisation, I am not going to judge it," O'Loan says.

What she will do as ombudsman, she says, is look at the performance and conduct of individuals and take the required action allowed by the considerable statutory powers of her office.

"Clearly, some police officers have been convicted of sectarian murder in the past, but I know a huge number of police officers, I taught a lot of them.

They are just like the rest of us," she says.

"I once asked a policeman about priorities, many years ago. He said that, in rural areas, the priority is providing a policing service and then staying alive, but in Border areas the priority is staying alive and then providing a policing service. That said something to me about the way an officer might see his job and how he might interact with people," she says.

Since the office opened for business last month, the kind of complaints that have come through to her 100 staff - some of whom are trained police complaints personnel from as far away as Hong Kong and South Africa - have concerned allegations of assault and lack of civility. Around 30 complaints came in on the first day. Each of them will be monitored so that any trends in their nature and origins can be identified.

It will be a completely different experience for complainants than the one that went before, she explains. "We don't have the security problems of the RUC. People can drop in easily from the street; this is a very open and inviting building. If you have to walk through an RUC station, you are at a psychological disadvantage already. I hope we can get through the complaints faster. The public will be kept informed in a way they weren't before. We will tell them as much as we can tell them at every stage of the process.

"If the result is that the officer did what he should have done, then I will tell the complainant that. If we find he has committed a crime, then I will recommend prosecution or disciplinary action, but it will all be fact and evidence-based and therein will lie our credibility and our integrity," she says.

PEOPLE have been telling the 48-year-old that, in a small way, she is making history, that as Police Ombudsman, she has a very real opportunity to make a contribution to peace.

"I don't want people to expect me to deliver peace tomorrow, but I am quite clear that the police service is crucial to the proper running of society. It is important that we have a proper system for dealing with those occasions when it goes wrong . . . but you are dealing with people's livelihoods and this does bring a burden with it. It is a huge responsibility," she says.

O'Loan acknowledges this burden, but says that when she goes home to Ballymena, her role as mother to five boys - aged between 13 and 22 - means different priorities. "When you go home and your 13year-old says `let's bake buns' or somebody needs to go and buy football boots, then you are back to reality," she says. "I live the same life as everybody else leads, I just happen also to be Police Ombudsman. I have to go to the supermarket like anybody else."

Her husband is the SDLP councillor, Declan O'Loan. She met the then mathematics student at a university function while training as a solicitor at King's College London.

O'Loan grew up in Hertfordshire, although her father, Herbert, was from Dublin. He died after a long illness when she was just 13.

"It was a traumatic time," she says. "I was the eldest of eight, my mother was 33. My earliest memories of her are of her singing around the house. She had a beautiful voice. But when he died, she stopped. It was like a bird being silenced."

She came to Northern Ireland in the 1970s. She quickly got used to a slower pace of life and grew to love the friendliness of the people ("they would talk to you on the bus"). In 1976, she was lecturing in Jordanstown when she was caught up in a bomb blast. She was three months' pregnant at the time and lost her baby. She suffered flashbacks for a while, and even now loud noises can summon up memories of the horrific event.

In 1980, she says: "We both had good jobs, we had a car, we had a child, and we thought there had to be more to life." The family went to Africa for three years, where Declan helped maths teachers and O'Loan was "a lady of leisure". She had two more babies and, at one stage, helped teach religious education.

O'Loan is a committed Catholic - on her bedside table currently are two books about aspects of spiritual life - but she is wary of making too much of her religious beliefs.

"We have reached the stage here where religion is the subject of division and separation - if you are not one side, you are the other. But, for me, it is about my relationship with God, and that is a very important part of my life," she says.

Recently, she was chairman of the organising committee for the visit by the Dalai Lama to Belfast and Derry. He was, she says, "a joyous man, full of good humour". As a member of the World Community for Christian Meditation, she meditates regularly herself. It helps to focus the mind on prayer, she says.

She will have plenty to meditate on during her seven-year term as Police Ombudsman. "I hope the office will be successful. I hope people will feel cared for when they come to us. I hope that all the police officers will feel that we are not out to get them. I hope the staff feel fulfilled," she says. And how will she deal with fears within the RUC that the new Police Ombudsman poses a threat? "By showing them the way we investigate is consistent with best practice, that it is fair, impartial and human rights-based. It is in their interests that the police service is composed of honourable people of integrity."

She talks of her job as a "tremendous opportunity", one of several she has been afforded in her professional and personal life. "I'd like to get this one right," she adds. "Whatever comes next, will come."