Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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173. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will provide details in tabular form by county of the numbers of teachers, special needs assistants and support staff who have not been Garda vetted; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [47576/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Garda vetting arrangements for the schools sector operate on a non-statutory basis and have been in place for new employees since 2006. The vetting arrangements were updated in 2010 and are set out in Department Circular 0063/2010 which clarifies the requirements for Garda vetting as part of recruitment procedures for all teaching and non-teaching positions. It is the responsibility of each relevant school authority to have in place the necessary policy and procedures to ensure compliance with this circular. Given that such matters are dealt with at individual school level, the detailed breakdown that is sought by the Deputy is not available centrally within my Department.

The level of vetting carried out for teachers can be gauged from data from the Teaching Council which shows that the number of teachers vetted under the non-statutory arrangements continues to steadily increase. There are 90,121 teachers on the Teaching Council register and 53,753 of them have been vetted. This represents about 60% of the teachers on the register.

The remaining balance of 36,368 that are not vetted are typically permanent teachers who have been in the same school since prior to 2006. Over the years the lack of capacity in the Garda Central Vetting Unit has been an impediment to getting all these existing teachers vetted.

The Garda Central Vetting Unit indicated to the Department, at a meeting in July 2014, that it now has capacity to vet these remaining teachers that were never vetted. However, if this is done now under the current non-statutory vetting arrangements it would be confined to a check for criminal offences.

The forthcoming statutory vetting arrangements will set out the requirements for vetting of new employees and for the retrospective vetting of existing employees. The statutory vetting arrangements include a check for relevant "soft information" which is an important new aspect of the vetting arrangements. "Soft information" is referred to as "specified information" in the National Vetting Bureau Act 2012 and is information other than criminal convictions held by the Garda Síochána where such information leads to a bona-fide belief that a person poses a threat to children or vulnerable persons.

Given that the forthcoming statutory vetting arrangements will include a check for both criminal offences and also any relevant "soft information" the Department considers that at this stage it is better from a child protection perspective to wait for the vetting of these teachers to be done under the forthcoming statutory vetting arrangements. This will also dovetail with the amendments that are being made to the Teaching Council Act which include:

(a) Linking compliance with the vetting arrangements with renewal of registration

(b) Strengthening the Fitness to Teach provisions so as to provide an appropriate mechanism for assessing a teacher's fitness to remain on the register if a vetting disclosure received in respect of a teacher indicates any potential risk of harm to a child. Removal of a teacher from the Teaching Council register is the best way of achieving child protection across all schools.

It is intended that all registered teachers will be vetted under the statutory vetting arrangements as soon as possible after the legislation is commenced.