Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is an important Bill and its introduction is welcome. It was promised by the previous Government but that did not come to pass. I welcome that it is now before us, that we will have a referendum which will enhance the rights of children in Ireland, and that as well as those rights being enhanced by this Bill, we will enhance the protection for children. Therefore, the introduction of the Bill is welcome. The concerns I have regarding parts of it would in no way cause me to oppose it because it is a welcome step forward. The only concern I have is to ensure it would work well, and we will, obviously, tease out the detail of the Bill on Committee and Report Stages, but when we return to this legislation, perhaps in a number of years time, we could also address some of the concerns I will raise now.

We have had a vetting scheme in place and it has worked well on occasion. In the past year it seemed to work quite well in that, to my knowledge, there were not significant undue delays until recently, when there were problems again. There have been significant delays before and people have lost jobs which were being held for them because they could not get their vetting procedure done in time. That is one of the key challenges facing the Garda vetting bureau. It deals with 300,000 applications a year, which is very large number, and they are not all applications in the area of child protection. It also deals with immigration, citizenship applications and, I presume, visa and other such applications, and its faces a challenge in dealing with all those. I urge the Minister not only to pass this legislation but to ensure this section within An Garda Síochána has the required resources to make certain there is no undue delay in the processing of applications. Voluntary groups and volunteers apply for Garda vetting to participate in summer projects, be it GAA clubs, soccer clubs or other projects. It is important to ensure first, that those people are not discouraged from doing so by an undue delay in the processing of their applications and, second, that they can take up the positions.

I know of instances where some of the delay was the fault of the applicants concerned in that they did not know the regime in place where Garda vetting was required for those participating in summer projects. Many of these people had worked on the same summer projects for many years but they could not take up their positions this year because in some cases they failed to apply on time and in other cases there was a delay in the processing of their applications.

Another case involved youth workers who were friends of mine who had applied for positions and were moving from one child care facility to take a similar position in another county. The facility had to hold the youth worker's job in the other county open for three months while awaiting the processing of the Garda vetting application, during which time there was no one in that position. That happened two years ago, matters have moved on since then and I have praised the unit for speeding up the processing of applications. If we are ensuring that many others will have to comply with Garda vetting, we need to ensure the current regime in place continues to operate and that there will be no delay in the processing of applications.

A major change to the vetting procedure is that soft information, of which there is a huge range, can be used. As soft information is not proven fact, there is a concern to ensure it is not used in the wrong way whereby people who are vexatious or who have had a clash with or are bullying someone would make a vexatious report and the person concerned would then suffer as a consequence. While an appeals process is provided for in the Bill, by the time a decision is reached, the position applied for may have been filled, and even if the person is successful in the appeal, his or her name will have been besmirched in some way, even though the information may not be public.

There will be a black mark against, or a question mark over, those people in the eyes of the person for whom they were going to work. There is a balancing act between the protection of children's rights and protection of the person. I will always err on the rights of the child but it is a balancing act. We have to protect people.

I know a person who applied to work with children and was refused permission. He had worked with children for many years and the decision was based on a conviction 30 years previously. The conviction was for exposing himself, which sounds terrible. However, the garda charged him with that because the man challenged the charge. He should have been convicted of urinating in a public street, which is not an offence that would block him from working with children. An appeals process is welcome so that someone in such a situation can explain the circumstances of something that happened 30 years ago. Hopefully, it will be dealt with in the new legislation, the Criminal Justice (Spent Convictions) Bill. Perhaps it will not obstruct someone who had worked enthusiastically with young people until the failure to get clearance.

Others will welcome the fact that these measures are being introduced. Anyone who has worked with constituents and in the social work field will welcome the development. At least soft information can now be fed in to the various systms so that we can know when there is a question over someone. If the person is looking for a position, he or she may be challenged in terms of what he or she has done in the past.

Ireland has a bad history of protecting young people. Predators have gone into sporting and cultural organisations with the intention of abusing children. Now, Irish society is standing up and being honest about its history and putting in place protection for those unable to protect themselves. Members are all adults and can stand up for their rights but this is a case of taking a step to ensure future generations will not suffer the same scale of abuse. We have taken the steps to prevent those predators getting into swimming clubs, soccer clubs or Gaelic games clubs, where they have ready access to children.

I welcome the Bill and I hope it will be enhanced on Committee Stage to ensure the necessary protections are made so that soft information is used properly. This should be in place in time to have effect if the forthcoming referendum is successful. The Minister should ensure the vetting section of the Garda Síochána has the resources to carry out its job as quickly, effectively and efficiently as possible.

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