Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 26 January 2012
176 Deputy Michael Healy-Rae asked the Minister for Justice and Equality the current backlog of applications in the Garda central vetting unit; the way he intends to tackle this backlog; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that this backlog is preventing persons from taking up employment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4649/12]
View answerI am informed by the Garda authorities that there are approximately 8,000 vetting applications in the course of being processed and that the average processing time at the Garda Central Vetting Unit (GCVU) now is 2 weeks approximately. This is a substantial improvement on this time last year when there were 55,000 cases on hand and processing took 11 weeks.
This processing time can, nevertheless, be affected by seasonal fluctuations or the necessity to seek further information on particular applications which may result in the processing time exceeding the present average of 2 weeks. Since I became Minister I have taken a number of measures to ensure that the time it takes for the processing of vetting applications has improved significantly. I remain very conscious of the need to keep the time required to obtain a vetting to the minimum possible.
