Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

That is unless there is a parish priest on the Teaching Council.

Amendments Nos. 4 and 6 involve replacing the term "fit and proper" person with "qualified" person. The Bill's provisions relating to the council being satisfied that an applicant for registration is a fit and proper person to be registered enable the council to consider, before registering a person, whether that person is a suitable person to be registered, including whether that person is a suitable person from a child protection perspective. A key aim of this Bill is to make Garda vetting an integral part of initial teacher registration and to ensure that any person who is not a suitable person to be registered, including where a person poses a risk to children or vulnerable persons, shall not be registered as a teacher in the first instance. The effect of amendments Nos. 4 and 6 would be to remove the capacity of the council to assess a Garda vetting disclosure for this purpose. If amendments Nos. 4 and 6 were accepted, the council would be able to assess a Garda vetting disclosure only for the purposes of determining if a person was qualified to be admitted to the register. This is clearly not the intended purpose of a vetting disclosure. The proposed amendments run contrary to the intention of the relevant provisions amending section 31 and the overall child protection aims of the Bill.

Regarding whether a person is qualified to be registered, the Bill already makes separate provision relating to the council setting out requirements in respect of the qualifications that a person must have attained in order to be registered. I therefore do not accept amendments Nos. 4 and 6.

My amendment No. 5 is necessary to correct references inadvertently used in this provision of the published Bill to a registered teacher applying for a renewal of registration under this section. As section 7 amends section 31 of the principal Act and is concerned with applications for initial registration, this amendment now correctly refers to a person applying for registration under this section.

I do not propose to accept amendment No. 7, the effect of which is to re-state in the provision in question a requirement for vetting that is already in place in the Bill. Section 7 already amends section 31 of the principal Act to provide that the Teaching Council shall not register a person unless the council has received and considered a vetting disclosure in respect of that person. Accordingly, I do not consider it appropriate or necessary to make this amendment.

The council, as a body, will develop its own procedures and guidelines setting out the manner in which an assessment will be carried out. That was one of the Deputy's concerns, that there would be guidelines as to how the council would assess whether a person is fit and proper.