The National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) has called for mandatory Garda vetting of all staff and volunteers working with children.
This would be a "fundamental step towards protecting our young people", NYCI director Mary Cunningham said yesterday. She was speaking at a seminar in Dublin on good practices in recruiting youth work staff.
"We cannot be complacent when it comes to protecting children," she said. "The relationship of trust we have with the young people, their parents and our fellow workers is a privileged one. Vetting enhances and supports this relationship."
Ms Cunningham also called for an all-island approach in legislation, policy and practice in child protection. "Serious consideration" should be given to drawing up an all-island register of people deemed unsuitable for work with children. This would include people not convicted of crimes against children but deemed unsuitable due to other behaviour.
"Those intending to harm children and young people do not recognise borders, and those charged with responsibility for safeguarding children and young people must not either. We need to develop a common approach to child protection on this island," she said.
She pointed out that Northern Ireland had a "disqualification from working with children" list; anyone on that list was forbidden by law from working with children. If an organisation recruited such a person or offered them a job in a childcare role, then they were also in breach of the law.
"However, we have no such list, and no provision for the sharing of soft information in the Republic of Ireland," she said.
YouthNet, a Northern Ireland umbrella group of youth organisations, also called for greater North/South co-operation on child-protection issues.
Mary Field, YouthNet's deputy director, said it was important to ensure that if someone was barred from working with children in Belfast "then they should be equally barred in Dublin".
She cautioned against an over-reliance on vetting when recruiting, saying that vetting was just one mechanism which would support other best practices in recruitment and selection.
