Retrospective Vetting of Teachers
Last updated: Tue, Sep 19th, 2017 10:29:35 am
Until February of 2017 schools were not required to obtain vetting disclosures in respect of existing employees - Teachers, Secretarial and Maintenance Staff, Volunteers, Sports coaches etc. who undertake relevant work or activities in the school under contracts of employment or other arrangements that were in place prior to 29 April 2016.
Section 21 of the Vetting Act has now been activated under which the Teaching Council is obliged to ensure that a vetting application is made in respect of individual teachers currently employed, contracted or permitted by it to undertake teaching duties where those individuals have never previously been Garda vetted. Such vetting is referred to as “retrospective vetting”. The Minister for Justice and Equality has prescribed that retrospective vetting applications must be made before 31 December 2017.
The Vetting Act provides that where a relevant organisation (which includes a school authority) fails, without reasonable excuse, to comply with the Act’s retrospective vetting requirements it is a criminal offence punishable by a fine of up to €10,000 or a prison term of up to 5 years or both
Further information in relation to the retrospective vetting requirements is set out in Circular 0016/2017 and in CL 0016/2017 Frequently Asked Questions. This includes information in relation to who needs to be retrospectively vetted and the practical arrangements that are in place to support such vetting.
The Teaching Council is processing the retrospective vetting of all 33,000 teachers who have never previously been Garda vetted. As the year progresses these teachers are being contacted on a randomly selected basis and asked to apply for vetting.
Teachers who hold a vetting letter from the Teaching Council (pre-29 April 2016) or have completed the NVB on-line vetting offered by the Teaching Council since 29 April 2016 are deemed vetted and do not require retrospective vetting.
Teachers can check their vetting status by logging onto the My Registration section of the TC website.
CL 16/2017, Para 4.8 advised school management to review its teaching staff records to identify which members of its teaching staff had not yet been Garda vetted and to draw up a list of these teachers. School managements are required to request teachers from this list to:
Inform school management as soon as an application for vetting was made by the Teaching Council in respect of him/her and
Provide school management with evidence that the vetting application had been submitted to the Bureau. A copy of the acknowledgement by the Bureau to the teacher should be kept on the teacher’s file.
School management should check periodically with teachers remaining on the list to ensure that the list is kept up to date and accurate.