Gay Mitchell (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 88: To ask the Minister for Education and Science when school boards of management will be vetted by the central vetting unit; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5562/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Ensuring the protection, health and welfare of children is a key concern for the Government, for parents, for agencies that work with children and for society generally and the Government is determined to do all it can to keep our children and vulnerable adults safe.

In the education sector, vetting is available in respect of prospective employees of children in detention schools as well as special needs assistants, SNAs, and bus escorts to children with special needs. My colleague, Deputy Brian Lenihan, Minister of State with responsibility for children, announced a doubling of the number of staff employed in the vetting unit — which has been relocated to Thurles under the Government's decentralisation programme — to ensure that they can handle a greater volume of requests from employers. The provision of additional staff resources will enable the Garda Síochána's vetting services to be extended to all persons working with children and vulnerable adults. This will include teachers, caretakers, bus drivers and others working with children, whether on a full-time or part-time basis.

The issue of vetting of members of boards of management raises the wider issue of vetting of people who volunteer in the education sector. My view is that the determining factor in deciding whether or not such persons should be vetted is the extent to which they have unsupervised access to children or vulnerable adults. As the expansion of service provided by the Garda vetting unit is rolled out, I envisage that any board of management members who may have frequent and unsupervised access to children would be included in this category.