THE GARDA CENTRAL Vetting Unit has acquired an additional 25 civil servants in a bid to reduce the amount of time people, who want to work with children or vulnerable adults and in taxi industry, must wait to get garda clearance.
The unit which processes applications for around 20,000 organisations, processed some 350,000 applications in 2012.
Current waiting time stand at around eight to ten weeks and it’s hoped the additional staff will shorten this.
The unit is planning to expand under new legislation and will now be known as ‘The National Vetting Bureau’. The Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter said it was “very important to ensure adequate staffing to meet these new demands”.
The staff will be redeployed from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Justice offices in Tipperary town, which also house the Citizenship Section of the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service.
Fine Gael TD, Jerry Buttimer, welcomed the announcement and said the redeployment will prevent people from having to wait to enter employment:
For too long we have heard of delays in processing applications, which have caused delays in people taking up employment and in volunteering across the country. This decision by the Minister will reduce the delays, benefiting individuals and organisations alike.
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