Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

A school needs to ensure that anybody who has unsupervised access to children is suitable to have that access. Clear guidelines have been sent to all schools to cover working with and protecting children, which is foremost in everybody's mind. The vetting unit recently moved to Thurles and its numbers are being substantially increased. That will enable it to do more vetting than it does. In the context of formal education, vetting is carried out in respect of special needs assistants, bus escorts and people who work with children in detention schools. We intend with our new resources to ensure that vetting is extended to all persons working with children and vulnerable adults. This will include teachers, caretakers, bus drivers and others working with children. We will be able to start that immediately once the extra resources and staffing are put in place, which I understand will be in the middle of this month.

Vetting of boards of management is a wider issue because it raises the question of whether one vets people working in a voluntary capacity. Many parents and other adults help out in schools, on school tours and so on, but it is crucial to see to what extent people have unsupervised access to children. In consultation with the partners and others, we will see how best to progress this. We will be asking everyone to be vigilant. If people and schools follow the Children First guidelines, it will be clear what type of procedures they should adopt. While protecting children, we do not want to destroy volunteerism. In the first instance, the vetting will be extended to cover teachers, caretakers and bus drivers.

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