ANY PLANS to allow people receiving unemployment benefit to work with children or other vulnerable groups under a newly announced “social employment” scheme would have to be met by appropriate investment in the Garda vetting unit, Fine Gael’s spokesman on children has said.
Charlie Flanagan’s comments come at a time when the average waiting time for Garda vetting stands at three months.
The force’s central vetting unit are dealing with an increasing number of applications. In 2009 a total of 246,194 applications were received by the unit, compared with 218,404 applications in 2008 and 187,864 in 2007.
Indications for 2010 are that the applications are set to grow again.
Earlier this year the head of the vetting unit, Supt Pat Burke, said the organisation was receiving an average of 7,000 vetting applications per week.
This compares with a weekly average of 4,735 last year.
Now a pilot “social employment” scheme is to be offered to about 10,000 people claiming unemployment benefits and it is envisaged that, if successful, the scheme could be extended to about 40,000 individuals who would gain employment in various areas, including childcare.
Mr Flanagan said the increasing demands on the unit meant more resources needed to be allocated to it. “At present we have an excellent Garda vetting unit but it is chronically under-resourced, resulting in a backlog of thousands of applications. I am calling on Minister [for Justice] Ahern to allocate more resources to the vetting unit so that this crucial child protection mechanism can process applications at a faster rate.”
Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív has said anyone who would potentially work with children or elderly people under the social employment scheme would be vetted as is normal practice. “There is continuous Garda vetting for all people who are working with children . . . like everybody else anybody employed obviously takes their place in the queue to get Garda vetting, so that won’t pose any particular difficulty.”
Meanwhile, voluntary groups and organisations representing the unemployed have cautiously welcomed the proposed pilot scheme which would mean participants working 19½ hours per week while retaining their social welfare payments.
Bríd O’Brien of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed said while talk about the creation of 10,000 jobs should be welcomed, it was important the community and voluntary sector was given adequate resources to absorb such an influx.
“Working in the community and voluntary sector is not for everybody,” she said, adding that an opt-in would ensure that the right people would be placed in the right jobs, furthering their own career experience and benefiting the organisation for which they were working.
Irish Rural Link said the proposal had the potential to generate real benefits if properly designed.