John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Question 305: To ask the Minister for Justice and Law Reform the number of outstanding applications for Garda clearance; the average processing time from receipt of an application to issuing a decision; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39706/10]

John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Question 306: To ask the Minister for Justice and Law Reform his views on the long delays in processing applications from care workers for Garda clearance; if he will allocate additional resources to eliminate the backlog of applications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39707/10]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 305 and 306 together.

The Garda Central Vetting Unit (GCVU) provides employment vetting for a large number of organisations in Ireland registered with the Gardaí for this purpose and which employ persons in a full-time, part-time, voluntary or training capacity to positions where they would have substantial, unsupervised access to children and/or vulnerable adults. The GCVU has managed a substantial increase over recent years in the numbers of vetting applications it receives - 187,864 in 2007; 218,404 in 2008 and 246,194 in 2009. At present, there are approximately 60,000 vetting applications in the course of being processed.

The processing time for vetting applications fluctuates in line with periods of increased demand. Furthermore, additional time may be required to process an individual vetting application in cases where clarification is required as to the details provided or where other enquiries need to be made, for example, when the person in question has lived and worked abroad. There will always be a reasonably significant time period required to process a vetting application. Registered organisations have been advised to take account of this in their recruitment and selection process. However, the Gardaí make every effort to reduce the time to the minimum possible consistent with carrying out the necessary checks. I am informed by the Garda Authorities that the current average processing time for vetting applications received at the GCVU is approximately 12 weeks.

The allocation of Garda resources, including personnel, is a matter for the Garda Commissioner. Due to the high volume of applications, an additional ten persons have recently been recruited to the Vetting Unit on a temporary basis. In addition, overall staffing arrangements at the Unit are kept under review.