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Minister For
Justice, Equality and Law Reform:
Last year, an inter-agency
working group on Garda vetting reported with a clear and focused
strategy for enhancing national vetting arrangements from a child
protection perspective. This strategy provided for an expansion in the
criminal record vetting service provided by the Garda central vetting
unit to all organisations which recruit persons having substantial,
unsupervised access to children and vulnerable adults. This has
significant implications for the education, child care, youth work,
sports and voluntary sectors, among others. Religious organisations also
fall within the terms of the strategy.
To meet an increase in demand
associated with such an expansion in the availability of vetting, the
working group made a number of recommendations. It sought an additional
ten civilian staff, to increase the vetting unit’s strength from 13 to
23, reviewable after six months of expanded operation. However, when the
Minister of State, Deputy Lenihan and I considered this recommendation,
we concluded that an extra 17 staff should be provided to the unit, to
more than double its strength from 13 to 30. We provided more staff than
was requested, as a recognition of the importance of vetting as a public
policy issue.
I am pleased to inform Deputy Cuffe
that the central vetting unit has now been successfully transferred to
new, custom-designed office accommodation in Thurles, as part of the
Government’s decentralisation programme. It will soon complete expansion
of its vetting service in that location. I confirm that during its
expansion the matter of the adequacy of staff resources will be kept
under constant review.
The strategy is being overseen by an
implementation group on Garda vetting which includes key stakeholders
from the education, health, child care and sports sectors, as well as
Mr. Paul Gilligan, chief executive officer of the ISPCC. The
implementation group is overseeing the implementation of the practical
recommendations of the report including the training of additional
staff, accommodation matters, financial management arrangements, work
process re-engineering and the preparation of client organisations and
sectors for the availability of vetting.
In terms of overall prioritisation
across sectors, the central vetting unit will roll out its vetting
service in the order in which each sector completes its own preparatory
actions.
Mr. Cuffe: I
welcome the expansion of the Garda vetting unit. However, I wonder if
the system can cope at the moment or will be able to cope in future with
the significant number of applications it receives. When one talks to
any of the relevant agencies it appears there is a near avalanche of
requests being received by the unit. I hope applications will be
prioritised in some way, particularly where children are most
vulnerable. Some sports bodies, for example in swimming, have a history
of problems with child abuse. It is simplistic to adopt a chronological
approach. Is the Minister aware that the National Youth Council of
Ireland states that at least 33,000 youth leaders will require vetting?
Is he confident that a mere 30 people in the office in Thurles will be
able to cope? What waiting time will apply?
The Minister has promised legislation
on reckless endangerment, using the state of Massachusetts as a model.
Will he bring forward legislation to require bodies working with
children to put in place a strong code of practice or vetting system for
its staff? While some organisations, notably the Roman Catholic Church
and Scouting Ireland, have put in place strong controls, many
organisations have only rudimentary systems or none at all. Will he
introduce such legislation so that children are not put at undue risk
from voluntary bodies or other org
There is an accumulated backlog of
unvetted people which will take some time to deal with. As I
indicated in my answer to the Deputy, these sectors will be dealt
with by the vetting unit in chronological order as they get their
requirements together. To vet 30,000 people the staff in the unit,
given its current complement, would need to deal with 1,000
inquiries each in a year, which should be possible. If extra staff
resources are required they will be recruited. As the Deputy knows,
it is necessary in all but a small number of cases to impose a
charge because we cannot have people repeatedly availing of a
service without thinking carefully about the costs to the Exchequer.
The new unit, in its purpose-built accommodation organised around
this core function and with a significant civilian, as opposed to
Garda, staff component, is the way forward and will greatly enhance
the capacity of the State to vet people in areas where it is
appropriate.
If an organisation
working with children submitted a request for vetting today how long
does the Minister estimate it would take for the vetting unit in
Thurles to give a definite response? Some of my staff have been on
the payroll of the Houses of the Oireachtas for five months and have
yet to receive security clearance.
I cannot answer a
hypothetical question but security clearance is a radically
different proposition from vetting provided by the central vetting
unit. It arises in another question later today so I will not
trespass on that but “soft” information, as opposed to “hard”
information, is a requisite in a security vetting procedure whereas,
as the Deputy knows, the inclusion of soft information on people on
public records for use in the vetting procedure is problematic. I
stress that negative clearance, which is what vetting amounts to, is
not a substitute for a proper duty of care on those involved in
recruiting people to perform functions involving children. Simply
finding that somebody has no criminal record is not for the most
part an adequate measure of the suitability of a person to undertake
a task involving unsupervised access to vulnerable people.
Are there
plans to legislate?
Minister for Justice,
Equality and Law Reform: I will come to that in a later question.
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