Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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488. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if a more volunteer and business-friendly vetting system will be adopted whilst maintaining the optimum level of protection for children, as the current requirement by persons to obtain multiple vetting is proving highly impractical; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [46915/15]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will appreciate, the primary purpose of the Garda employment vetting service is to seek to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults. Accordingly, the vetting process demands rigorous procedures to safeguard its integrity and to maintain the highest level of confidence by the public and organisations availing of the service.

Full vetting checks are conducted by the Garda Central Vetting Unit (GCVU) for each new vetting application received to ensure that the most recent data available is taken into account. This is because once there has been any significant lapse of time between one employment and another, the original Garda Vetting Disclosure must be reviewed to take account of any changes in information, such as more recent criminal convictions.

Furthermore, under the Data Protection Acts, any sensitive personal data which employers use in regard to their employees must be current, accurate and up-to-date. The general non-transferability and contemporaneous nature of the current process also protects against the risk of fraud or forgery . Such procedures are in line with best practice internationally.

There are, however, certain limited circumstances where organisations can share a single vetting disclosure where this is agreed to by the vetting applicant. For example, persons involved in voluntary work may be doing work with more than one voluntary organisation at the same time, and may agree with the vetting applicant to share a single vetting disclosure. Similar arrangements arise in the health sector in regard to persons working as locums, agency nurses or other temporary employees in a number of different organisations, or in the education sector where substitute teachers are on panels for substitute teaching in more than one school.

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. Any vetting process will take a certain minimum amount of time to complete and, taking into account the need to protect children and vulnerable adults while providing an effective and efficient service, I do not think that this time period is unreasonable.