Quick summary
- Garda vetting is a legal requirement under the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Acts 2012-2016.
- It applies to anyone in direct contact with children, not just paid employees.
- It must be completed before the person starts, with no provisional access allowed.
- Processing typically takes 8-10 working days.
- Vetting must be renewed every 36 months.
- As of early 2025, Early Childhood Ireland administers vetting for service employees; Tusla vets registered providers, childminders and Board chairpersons.
Who actually needs to be vetted
Regulation 9 of the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016 requires Garda Vetting Disclosure for anyone in direct contact with children in the service, before they start. That's a wider group than most new owners assume:
- Every employee, full-time or part-time.
- Unpaid workers and volunteers.
- Students on placement.
- Contractors who have direct contact with children (not, for example, a delivery driver who never enters the building).
- Members of the Board of Management.
The test is direct contact with children, not employment status. A student doing a two-week placement needs vetting exactly the same as a permanent staff member.
What "before they start" actually means
There's no provisional or conditional start allowed. Vetting has to be completed, not just submitted, before the person has any access to children. This is the single most common way services trip themselves up: someone is due to start on a Monday, vetting was only submitted the previous Wednesday, and there's a gap nobody planned for. Processing typically takes 8-10 working days, so vetting needs to be one of the first things initiated in a recruitment process, not the last box ticked before a start date.
Renewal: the part that goes quiet
Vetting isn't a once-off. It has to be renewed every 36 months, and unlike a lot of compliance deadlines, nothing forces this to your attention when it's due. There's no automatic notification that arrives the week before a member of staff's vetting lapses. It sits quietly until either someone checks, or an inspector asks.
Who administers vetting
This changed relatively recently. As of early 2025, Early Childhood Ireland administers vetting for employees of early learning and care (ELC) and school-age care (SAC) services. Tusla continues to handle vetting for registered providers themselves, for childminders, and for Board of Management chairpersons. If you're not sure which route applies to a specific person in your service, it's worth checking directly rather than assuming. The two processes aren't interchangeable.
Practical advice
- Build vetting into the very start of your recruitment process, not the final pre-start step: initiate it as soon as an offer is accepted.
- Keep a single, central record of every vetted person's completion date and next renewal date, instead of relying on individual staff files someone has to open to check.
- Extend your vetting checklist to cover volunteers, students and contractors specifically. These are the categories most likely to be missed because they don't go through a standard HR onboarding process.
- If a student placement is booked with a training provider, confirm in writing whether the college or your service is responsible for arranging vetting, so it isn't assumed to be someone else's job.
How Tot Tracker helps
Tot Tracker tracks vetting status and the 36-month renewal date for every staff member, volunteer, student and Board member on file, with alerts before a renewal is due, so vetting status is a five-second check rather than something rediscovered at inspection.