About 34,000 teachers working in the education system for a decade or more face being vetted for the first time by gardaí over the coming months.

At present only new teachers and those moving schools are required to obtain Garda clearance, which is administered by the Teaching Council.

From the end of this month, legislation will be commenced which will oblige school authorities to vet teachers employed prior to 2006, when it became mandatory for new applicants.

Latest figures show almost 40 per cent of the 90,000 teachers registered with the council have yet to be vetted.

The Department of Justice has confirmed serving teachers will face checks from when the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 is commenced at the end of the month.

In addition to the existing check for criminal offences, the new process will involve a search of “soft information”.

According to the department, this is “information other than criminal convictions held by the Garda that leads to a bona-fide belief that a person poses a threat to children or vulnerable persons”.

National vetting unit

A spokesman declined to say how long it was likely to take to vet the 34,000 existing teachers who have not been vetted, except to say there were no “legal or resource impediments”.

"The national vetting unit of An Garda Síochána has offered to conduct vetting of these teachers," a Department of Justice spokesman said.

“Currently about 300,000 vetting applications are processed by the Garda vetting unit each year.

“The primary purpose of this Act is to put the procedures that have been developed to vet these applications into law.”

A Garda spokesman said it was confident it would meet all requirements contained within the legislation.

National Parents’ Council (Primary) chief executive Áine Lynch welcomed the developments but said it was important to know how long the retrospective vetting was likely to take.

“We would like to see a plan on how the backlog will be managed and what time line is involved,” she said.

From April 29th it will be a criminal offence for school authorities to employ teachers or contract coaches or volunteers without first obtaining a vetting disclosure from the new bureau.

Schools have been warned that vetting checks should not be the only child protection measures.

They are also required to check references and gaps in career history as part of normal checks.

At present the Teaching Council provides teachers with a vetting disclosure letter, but does not make a copy of the disclosure to the school authority.

This practice will end from the end of this month.

Average waiting times for Garda vetting in the past have been in the region of several weeks.

An e-vetting system was developed over recent years to streamline the process.

Children’s rights campaigners have long been calling for vetting procedures to be strengthened.