Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I must still oppose the amendment. I will draw some aspects of the amendments to the attention of Senators. Amendment No. 4 states: "to include work carried out by persons who engage in the provision of professional child-minding services for reward including work carried out by a nanny and/or au pair service...". First, with regard to an au pair service, an organisation or a service that is employing people as nannies means those nannies will be vetted. Getting somebody from a service is separate from employing an individual au pair. The reference is to professional childminding. This would breach the line that I described between an individual privately making an arrangement with another individual, as opposed to an individual making an arrangement with an organisation or business of some description.

The proposed amendment contains no definition of a professional childminding service. It states: "to include work carried out by persons who engage in the provision of professional child-minding services..". If it is a professional childminding service that employs individuals and I contact the service and it sends me an individual to work with a vulnerable child, the service would have had an obligation to carry out vetting. This amendment does not work. If the Senator is referring to an individual who professionally carries out a service, as opposed to the way the amendment is phrased, there would have to be a definition of what is meant by "who professionally carries out a service".

We do not need an uncertain provision in the Bill that generates a grey area, particularly a grey area that could result in somebody being criminally prosecuted. Let us say I am a student in Trinity College or University College Dublin, UCD, and I keep body and soul together by minding children in the neighbourhood for two or three days per week. I do it as an individual. Is that a professional service? Is it an amateur service? Is it a personal service? Does one criminalise the individuals who asked me to engage in that work because I was not vetted?

I cannot accept the amendments. I realise they are well meant and are designed to try to provide additional protection, but it could create major problems to rush amendments of this nature without them being adequately teased out. There are still some problems in their construction and there are no relevant definitions to ensure the provision could be applied in an appropriate manner in the Bill. Equally, the amendments stray past the situation of where an individual makes private arrangements. Unfortunately, I cannot accept them.