Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

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.

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