26/02/2026
Over the past year, I have identified serious gaps in Ireland’s current Garda Vetting system gaps that directly affect the safety of children in early years settings nationwide.
Recent Parliamentary Questions confirm what providers already know: Garda Vetting is a point-in-time check and does not provide continuous monitoring.
This means a person can be fully vetted on a Monday, move to another service a few weeks later, and any concerns that arise in the meantime may never be flagged to a future employer.
Journal Investigates report further confirms the reality of these gaps.
Tusla has referred five Special Emergency Arrangement (SEA) providers to the Garda National Vetting Bureau over vetting concerns. A national audit revealed that:
🔸 25% of staff working with vulnerable children had no Garda Vetting, qualifications, references, or police clearance on file
🔸 Over half were missing essential documentation
🔸 Staff were rostered despite missing critical safeguarding checks
These are not minor administrative oversights they are safeguarding failures.
To be clear:
• Safeguarding concerns do not automatically appear on Garda Vetting disclosures
• “Specified information” takes months to process between agencies
• During that silence, children remain unprotected
• Departments responsible for safeguarding have not met to address these gaps
• Providers can not access the information needed to protect children in real time
As a provider, I have seen first-hand how delays, limited information-sharing, and lack of accountability expose children, families, educators, and other providers to risks we can not see and can not prevent under the current framework.
At present, the people we trust with our children can move through the sector without continuous oversight and when safeguarding relies on a certificate that reflects only one moment in time, it is children who bear the risk.
Other countries, including territories in Australia, operate a dual safeguarding model: police vetting + continuous monitoring + automatic alerts.
If Ireland introduced a similar system alongside Garda Vetting, children would be protected every day, not just the day paperwork was approved.
Children First is clear that a child’s safety, welfare, and voice must come first. But without a statutory safeguarding register mechanism, this principle can not be fully realised.Concerns can not be shared, accountability breaks down, and children’s rights are placed at risk instead of protected by design
In a system with no way to track risk or share safeguarding concerns, children’s voices become second if they are heard at all.
Furthermore, Ireland ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1992. The Convention requires that children’s safety, welfare, and protection come first in all decisions, policies, and systems. However, Parliamentary Questions confirm that Ireland has not fully incorporated the UNCRC into domestic law. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (February 2023) has already warned Ireland that: • Gaps in national legislation remain, and • Ireland must conduct a full review of all legislation to bring it in line with the UNCRC.
I will continue to advocate for safeguarding reform that ensures:
✔ continuous monitoring
✔ automatic employer notifications
✔ shared accountability
✔ timely safeguarding disclosures
✔ alignment with Children First
✔ real-time protection
✔ international best practice
⚖️Where is the justice for children when the system can not track risk, can not share concerns, and can not protect them in real time? Providers like myself can only protect children to the extent the law allows, and right now, that legal framework does not match the reality on the ground.⚖️
A sincere thank you to Deputy Ken O’Flynn, T.D., for raising these safeguarding concerns at Oireachtas level through Parliamentary Questions and thank you to the Federation of Early Childhood Providers for their leadership and collaboration on this issue.
Tag your TDs. Tag the Minister. Tag anyone with the power to act.
🚨Ireland can not fix a safeguarding gap it refuses to acknowledge it. 🚨
