Vetting of child workers ‘is overdue’

PARENTS have called on the Government to set up a long-awaited clearance system for people working with children.

It has been almost a year since talks began between Department of Education officials, teachers, school managers, gardaí and other groups to decide on guidelines.

They were expected to draw up regulations by the end of last year, but the matter was instead handed over to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

The question of vetting workers came to the fore last August after the arrests of school caretaker Ian Huntley and classroom assistant Maxine Carr in relation to the murders of schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

But the National Parents Council (Primary) said last night that the question has been around for much longer than that, but there are still no proper guidelines.

“We’re told there’s an issue about gardaí not having time to do the work, but if something like this isn’t a major priority, I don’t know what is,” said chief executive Fionnuala Kilfeather.

“There must be a balance between workers’ rights and protecting children, but if we haven’t learned anything from history, we don’t know what we’re doing.”

A Garda Central Vetting Unit was set up in January 2002 to handle clearance requests for people seeking work in the health services who would have substantial unsupervised access to children.

The unit dealt with around 70,000 vetting and data protection requests last year, including all volunteers for the Special Olympics.