700 special needs assistant roles empty

Parents of children with special needs have criticised the Government after it emerged that as many as 700 special needs assistant posts have gone unfilled due to a backlog in garda vetting applications.

Due to changes in the law this is the first year that posts cannot be filled by people who have not been processed under garda vetting, with RTÉ reporting that 700 teaching and SNA slots are still vacant as a result of the current backlog.

It has been claimed that, as a result of the vacancies, some children with special needs have been forced to stay at home, while other children have been requested to attend school for shorter periods.

It also emerged that while gardaí have processed thousands of applications since mid-August, there are still 389 special needs assistant and 294 teacher vetting applications that still need to be processed.

Lorraine Dempsey of the Special Needs Parents Association said that extra resources need to be put in place to catch up with the backlog as quickly as possible and to ensure that a similar seasonal backlog does not reoccur in future.

“It is very disappointing that this was not foreseen given the application cycles that we have,” she said.

“At the end of the day we have one piece of legislation to protect children and then inadvertently we have them impacted in a different way by a backlog in vetting

“This is where we did not have departments communicating with one another.”

Gardaí have said 80% of electronic applications are being processed within five days, but many schools are still required to make paper applications and, of those applications, 80% are taking up to four to five weeks to be processed. It is understood that many of those applications are nearing completion and will be issued shortly.

Ms Dempsey said that increased resources should have been made available and will now need to be put in place so that the vacancies can be filled as quickly as possible.

“There should have been an increased number of staff to increase garda vetting,” she said.

“We know this is going to be a seasonal demand and we need an increased number of staff for that.

“We should not see this happening next year.”

Earlier this year, minister of state for disability issues Finian McGrath said that, up to the end of May, the garda central vetting unit had processed 129,651 applications, of which 80% were processed within the four-week timeframe.