Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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666. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her Department will take over responsibility for and centralise the process of Garda vetting applications from special needs assistants in order to allow for the creation of substitute panels and opportunities for SNAs to be quickly deployed to new schools if necessary. [15854/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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In April 2016, the Minister for Justice and Equality commenced the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Acts 2012 to 2016 (the Vetting Act) which put in place statutory requirements for the Garda vetting of persons involved in working with children and vulnerable persons.

The Vetting Act applies not just to schools but to any relevant organisation that employs, contracts, permits or places a person in relevant work with children or vulnerable persons.  The Vetting Act provides that vetting is conducted by the National Vetting Bureau on foot of an application by a relevant organisation that is registered with it.  The vetting legislation and the vetting procedures operated by the National Vetting Bureau fall within the remit of the Minister for Justice and Equality.

When the vetting requirements were commenced in 2016, my Department issued circular 0031/2016 which set out the statutory vetting requirements applicable to schools along with the practical arrangements in place to support the vetting procedures.  A Frequently Asked Questions document was also published by my Department to assist schools with queries in respect of the Circular. 

At the same time, the vetting related provisions of the Teaching Council (Amendment) Act, 2015 were commenced. The existence of the Teaching Council, as a statutory body with a statutory role in the registration of registered teachers, enabled my Department to bring forward the relevant legislative provisions under the Teaching Council Amendment Act 2015 which allowed for such a streamlined mechanism to be put in place in the case of registered teachers. 

However, it is not possible for my Department to put in place similar legislative arrangements in respect of non-teaching staff, such as Special Needs Assistants (SNAs).

The Vetting Act provides that a relevant organisation must, other than in certain limited circumstances, obtain a vetting disclosure from the National Vetting Bureau prior to commencing the employment of an employee to undertake relevant work with children or vulnerable adults.  Each school is a relevant organisation under the Vetting Act and the creation of a panel of potential SNA employees, including a panel of substitutes,  across schools would not obviate the obligation of each individual school to obtain a vetting disclosure prior to employing a person from such a panel.

The Vetting Act however allows for some limited exemptions to this requirement, including certain exemptions that are applicable in the case of recurring substitute employments such as a recurring substitute SNA employment.  The Act’s exemptions in respect of substitute employments are set out in section 5.3 of my Department’s Circular. 

Under the new statutory vetting procedures, the vetting of SNAs and other non-teaching staff continues to be conducted via the relevant diocesan office or school management body as the relevant conduit organisation for the vetting of SNAs and other non-teaching staff employed by schools. In the case of ETB schools the relevant ETB is the relevant organisation for such vetting.