An Garda Síochána
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-18
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Malcolm Byrne (FF), Wicklow-Wexford

I thank the Minister of State very much. With all due respect, I do not think we needed a review group to operate for five years to tell us that. It is something I think we all knew. We needed a more efficient system. The Federation of Irish Sport, charities and community organisations have been saying for a long time that there should be a very simple vetting process. Anybody who is working with children or vulnerable adults should have to go through one vetting process based on the assessments of risk.
They should just have to go through one vetting process based on the assessment of risk. It has taken us five years to establish something that we already know. The key question here in terms of what is being proposed is when we will see the introduction of the general requirement on vetting being renewed every three years. If it does require amending legislation, when will that be introduced in the House? In other words, when we are talking to people, including those in the Federation of Irish Sport - I am glad the Department is engaging with that organisation - we can say that somebody who is involved in a sporting organisation, who may be a childcare worker, primary schoolteacher or whatever else, would have one simple vetting mechanism. Is there going to be a tender for the technical system that is to be introduced? What is envisaged? Where is the tech oversight in the delivery of that?
To provide confidence to all of the organisations that have been waiting for so long, we need to know very clearly when the legislation will be introduced and that the public will know that, from the first of a certain month or on a specific date, this simple process will be in place. I do not have confidence in a system that was meant to deliver a more efficient vetting system when it has taken five years for it to come up with what is a repetition of most of the things we have been hearing for the past half decade.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-18