An Garda Síochána
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-19
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Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

I met with the Garda National Vetting Bureau in Tipperary town about two months ago. I went down there to get an update from the bureau, but also to communicate some of the concerns Deputy Ward and other Deputies have expressed to me.
It is important to point out that the vetting bureau of An Garda Síochána received over 6,330 vetting applications in 2025. The current processing time for 85% of those is eight to nine working days. For the majority of applications, it manages to produce an outcome in very short order. There are obviously some improvements that could be made. One thing I mentioned at my meeting with the gardaí in the vetting bureau is that we should allow for transferability of vetting. A person who has been vetted to coach a GAA team should be able to then move over and coach a soccer team without having to get vetting done again. Much of that can be done by the organisations themselves, such as the sporting organisations. The Teaching Council has a very good mechanism whereby it permits transferability of vetting from one school to another and the vetting moves with the teacher when they move across the school.
There is also an issue in respect of wet signatures and whether online signatures would be permissible. There was concern expressed to me by An Garda Síochána in respect of that. From its perspective, one reason for delays is that sometimes individuals have been abroad for several years. That can give rise to significant delay because the bureau is dependent on getting information from abroad. That is an understandable reason for there being a delay, but it is important to point out that, as I said, over 630,000 applications came in last year, and the bureau processed the vast majority of them very promptly.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-19