Current Garda Vetting system is not fit for purpose

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

If you are familiar with Garda Vetting you will realise how insane the entire palaver is.

Of course it is essential that certain groups of people have to be Garda vetted but the way the State does this is beyond absurd and it should be improved immediately.

At this stage I have no idea how many times I have been Garda vetted.

I have to be Garda vetted as a Dominican, as a priest working in the Dublin archdiocese, as a hospital chaplain and as a member of the St Vincent de Paul Society; that’s four different vettings. Why?

Each time I have to fill out an online form giving the addresses and dates of every place I have lived since the day I was born. As I have already mentioned, this is insane. At this stage the Garda Vetting authority has multiple copies of all my details. 

Can someone please explain to me why I have to keep giving the same information ad nauseam. Is someone out there trying to annoy me, humiliate me or simply frustrate me? An Garda Síochána knows many times over when and where I have lived from the date of my birth up to the most recent form-filling exercise. Why can’t I simply tell them where I have lived since I last filled out the form?

And to add to the frustration, and pure stupidity, the bureaucrats in the churches are most annoying.

They are insistent in dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ’t'. And then all the seminars we are supposed to attend. Only last week I saw a newsletter from a religious congregation on safeguarding. It must have cost a lot of money to produce but communicates little. 

It is the perfect example of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. It would be interesting to know how much money every religious congregation and diocese is paying its safeguarding staff to organise and police the paper trail that is involved in the current Garda Vetting system.

I’m baffled how there has never been any serious discussion how all that happened happened. The emphasis now seems to be PC-oriented with no in-depth analysis of the wrong that was committed and how it was ignored by religious superiors. 

Some days after completing the vetting form you receive an electronic notification which includes this sentence: ‘The vetting application made in respect of you has been completed and a disclosure has been made to [the relevant organisation]’. An appalling use of language. 

The first time I saw that I was baffled by the use of the word ‘disclosure’ and extremely worried too. The word disclosure implies that something untoward or secret has been discovered.

It’s as clear as day that the system is not fit for purpose. And of course not a word from a provincial or a bishop objecting to the current vetting system.

Why does the State not devise a system whereby one’s details, including a person’s Garda Vetting status could be put on our Public Services Card or else they could develop an app that would serve the same purpose?

Anyone interested in starting a campaign to have this silly Garda vetting system redesigned? I for one will join the club.