Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and welcome the Teaching Council (Amendment) Bill 2015. I am standing in for my colleague, our education spokesperson, Senator Mary Moran, who is a teacher herself.

It is important to note that this Bill to amend the 2001 Teaching Council Act is achieving cross-party support. Its overarching aims are to strengthen the statutory provisions relating to the Teaching Council's fitness to teach function and to underpin the central role of the Teaching Council in the forthcoming statutory vetting arrangements for registered teachers. Both of these are extremely important from the point of view of children and teachers because they enhance child protection measures while also leading to further professionalisation of the teaching profession to ensure it becomes a fully regulated profession in line with other regulated professions. Other colleagues have spoken of the high regard in which teachers are held in this country, and that is true. They are hugely respected as professionals, but it is important the legislation reflects the respect and esteem in which they are held.

We recently debated the Legal Services Regulation Bill concerning the regulation of my own profession, and some of the key attributes of that Bill, most notably around transparency and accountability, which are reforms I fully support, pertain to all regulated professions. The fitness to teach provisions in this Bill are part of that. I note the Minister's comments that while there are already provisions in the parent Act of 2001, it was required to make a number of changes to the fitness to teach provisions before their commencement and before they are fully effective.

Vetting is an issue into which we on the Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality have had a significant input. We took hearings on the vetting legislation before it was enacted in 2012 and we heard from a range of different groups and bodies, including the teaching profession, about just how important the Bill was. It is a matter of great concern that it is not yet commenced and I have taken this up with the Minister for Justice and Equality. The Garda vetting bureau is doing immensely important and extensive work and I note that the Minister said over 60% of the approximately 90,000 teachers on the Teaching Council register are now vetted and that it is intended that all teachers who have not been vetted, in particular those permanent teachers who have been in situin the same school since prior to the introduction of vetting, will be vetted under the new statutory vetting arrangements as soon as possible after this legislation is enacted. Nevertheless, there is a real concern about the vetting legislation itself. I accept this is not in the remit of the Minister for Education and Science but is proper to the Minister for Justice and Equality.

The 2014 UK Supreme Court decision in R (T) v. the Greater Manchester chief constable, in which a blanket disclosure provision whereby very minor convictions were disclosed in respect of each individual was held to be in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, has necessitated a review not only of the Vetting Act but of the spent convictions legislation, and we are awaiting amendments in this regard.

The Minister said there would be an electronic mechanism for the Teaching Council when the vetting procedures are in place and I welcome that. I also welcome the fact that the Bill will enable the council to put in place an electronic mechanism to help streamline vetting arrangements for both registered teachers and schools to ensure registered teachers who need to provide employers with vetting information for employment purposes will be able to do so in a straightforward and streamlined manner. One of the key issues we addressed in the Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality when we were looking at the vetting legislation was logistics and how one could achieve a simplified process which is sufficiently protective of children. The other welcome and very practical point made by the Minister was on the rolling arrangements for vetting so that it will not necessarily be the case that each teacher will be vetted each year.

I will conclude by stepping outside the remit of this Bill to note that in my own area of third level education there have been some developments in recent days around issues concerning the investments of third level institutions. In the Trócaire conference about climate justice in NUI Maynooth, the president of the university said there would be no investment in fossil fuels by his university. Mary Robinson, chancellor of my own university, Trinity College Dublin, has said she will look at whether Trinity College makes any investments in fossil fuels. There has been a large movement towards divestment and a moving away from investments in fossil fuels across the education sector generally and internationally in cases such as Oxford University and Georgetown University. Other non-education institutions such as the Church of England have also made commitments to move away from such investments. I realise it is completely outside the issue of the Teaching Council but I thought it might be worth raising since this is being spoken about in Maynooth as we debate this Bill and it is clearly a hugely important issue. Many institutions in the education system and outside will be asking themselves if they can divest and have more ethical investments as a result.

I commend the great work the Minister and her officials have done on this Bill. It is hugely important to make amendments to the existing parent legislation on the Teaching Council as it has become clear since the Teaching Council was established in 2006 that certain amendments were needed. I note that colleagues across the House have welcomed the Bill. I also commend the Minister on the work she has done with the teaching unions to ensure the Bill has a smooth passage.