42,000 teachers have yet to be vetted

The Teaching Council of Ireland has said it will need more resources to tackle the backlog of 42,000 teachers who still have not been vetted.

The figure emerged at a meeting of the Oireachtas Education Committee yesterday, with Fianna Fáil Seanad spokeswoman on education Averil Power claiming she was shocked at the number of teachers who had not been vetted.

The National Parents Council voiced concern and said it was questionable whether the Garda National Vetting Unit had the capacity to deal with that backlog if new laws requiring anyone working with children to be vetted are introduced.

The Teaching Council of Ireland (TCI) said that while all new entrants to the register of teachers have been Garda vetted since its establishment in 2006, that accounted for 31,000 teachers out of 73,000.

A TCI spokesperson said: “The council accepts that the remaining figure of 42,000 is quite high, and has been working closely with the Garda Síochána to find a solution that would complete the vetting of this cohort as quickly as possible.

“This solution will have to involve extra staff resources for the teaching council.

“We already process 10,000 applications per annum based on our current staff complement.

“We are precluded from recruiting further as the council is deemed to be subject to the employment control framework, even though it is a self-funded body and has sufficient financial resources to hire extra staff.”

Figures released this week indicated the vetting unit has 40,000 applications on hand at any one time, but new laws aimed at protecting children could mean the backlog would need to be tackled over a short timeframe.

Recent figures show the council co-ordinates over 10,000 Garda vetting applications per annum.

Efforts are under way to tackle the backlog, such as an amendment to the Education Act 2012 that will allow the council to regulate for periodic Garda vetting when a teacher is seeking to renew registration.

Child law rapporteur Geoffrey Shannon said a regulatory impact assessment would need to be undertaken to ensure there was adequate capacity to vet everyone that needed to be vetted.

Ms Power said: “It will come as a complete shock to parents across the country that there are hundreds of thousands of children being taught by teachers who have not been vetted by the gardaí.”