Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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136. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if she has received correspondence from the Industrial Development Agency Ireland or any private financial institutions querying the reason that no Garda vetting service exists for financial institutions who may wish to vet incoming employees; her plans to develop proposals in this area; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38904/15]

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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153. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the reason no Garda vetting service exists for financial institutions who may wish to vet incoming employees; the routes currently open to such companies to check to ensure the staff they are hiring have no history of criminal financial mismanagement; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38910/15]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 136 and 153 together.

An employment vetting service is currently provided by An Garda Síochána to a range of public and non-public sector bodies in respect of persons seeking employment in Ireland where that employment involves substantial, unsupervised access to children or vulnerable adults.

The vetting service is provided by the Garda Central Vetting Unit (GCVU) which engages with registered organisations to facilitate the service. The current average processing time for vetting applications is four weeks. However, in some individual cases additional enquiries may be necessary and this may result in processing times in excess of the average.

Last year the Garda Central Vetting Unit processed over 318,000 applications. So far this year over 251,000 applications have been processed to 30 October 2015. The majority of these applications were dealt with within the average four week processing time referred to above.

Criminal history vetting for general employment purposes is not available. My Department and An Garda Síochána receive correspondence from and have ongoing interaction with a range of bodies and companies, including IDA Ireland, in respect of the issue of employment vetting across other sectors of the economy.

There are no plans at present to extend the current employment vetting service in this regard. As I am sure the Deputy will appreciate, the policy priority is to focus on embedding and enhancing the current vetting service in respect of persons working with children and vulnerable adults.