Garda Vetting Service

Garda Vetting Procedure

Under the National Vetting Bureau ( Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 those who come into contact with children and/or vulnerable adults during the course of their work or activities must undergo Garda Vetting.

The ERF Garda Vetting services is one of the key services provided to our members and the private and public healthcare sector. We are one of the top five providers of this service in the country, processing over 45,000 applications annually.

Garda Vetting Updates - July 2025

The Garda National Vetting held mandatory Compliance Briefings in June, the purpose of them being to communicate to all relevant organisations regarding:

EU Directive 93 and ID Validation 

As and from the 7th July 2025, to improve and enhance the protection of children, vetting for any relevant work or activities with children will now include additional checks with the other 26 EU member states and the UK. In summary, vetting subjects must declare if they have lived in any other EU member state or the UK.

These EU & UK checks are only conducted for persons whose role in your organisation involves relevant work or activities with children.

To support these safeguarding enhancements, vetting subjects (for roles with children who previously lived in an EU member state or the UK) will now be required to provide more detailed information:

For relevant applications, the following fields have been added to support accurate identification and efficiency of processing:

• City/Town of Birth
• Mother’s Forename and Maiden Name
• Father’s Forename and Surname
• Issuing Country of Passport
• The address section has been updated to easily accommodate international addresses.

Vetting subjects will also be asked if they hold an ID document from a European or UK country of previous residence. These new questions are automatically built into the e-Vetting application process for applicants to complete.

Impact on Application Turnaround Times

These EU and UK checks will extend the processing time for these applications. You should factor these timelines into your recruitment process.

• For applications requiring checks with an EU Country, allow for up to an additional 10 working days.
• For applications requiring checks with the UK, allow for up to an additional 20 working days.

These timelines are in line with established EU/UK policy and are outside the remit/control of the GNVB.

ID Validation

To ensure you are complaint with the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Acts 2012-2016 all vetting applicants must be met in person to have their ID documents verified.

We are not permitted to process any applicants where an in-person meeting (ID Validation) has not taken place.

The 100 point system is no longer in operation and has been replaced with the IDENTITY DOCUMENT SCHEDULE. 

For further details please contact the ERF Garda Vetting Team @ 01 8161754 or Lorraine Mooney, Garda Vetting Manager @ 087 1350681