Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 27 February 2014
179. Deputy Luke 'Ming' Flanagan asked the Minister for Justice and Equality with regard to Garda vetting for the purposes of clearance of those working with children and so on, the reason there is such lengthy delays in processing the vetting applications; his views on whether this is a major barrier to people seeking employment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10040/14]
View answerI am informed by the Garda authorities that the average processing time for applications is now approximately 4 weeks from date of receipt. This is a considerable improvement on July last year when processing times had reached 14 weeks. I should also point out that that the number of vetting applications received by the Garda Central Vetting Unit (GCVU) each year has risen from 187,864 in 2007 to 381,082 by the end of 2013.
Of course processing times will fluctuate upwards and downwards depending on seasonal demands and volumes received and, in some cases, depending on whether further enquiries have to be conducted with external Garda Stations or other agencies such as the Courts Service, Probation Service, HSE, etc. These enquiries are conducted for a multiplicity of reasons such as verification of identity, updating of incomplete records, and establishing outcomes of investigations.
Nonetheless, I am committed to ensuring that An Garda Síochána has the resources to perform this most essential of tasks. In that regard, the Garda Commissioner has confirmed to me that there are now 174 whole-time equivalent staff (170 civilians and 4 members of An Garda Síochána) assigned to the Garda Central Vetting Unit (GCVU). To put this in perspective, this represents an 87% increase on the staffing level at the end of December 2012 when 93 staff were assigned to the GCVU.
The Deputy may also wish to note that the development of an e-Vetting solution is well under way. This will facilitate the processing of applications in an e-format, thus removing the current time-consuming process of manually managing applications received and will result in a streamlining of the overall vetting process in this jurisdiction.
