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School protection measures 'better in Northern Ireland'
08 March 2010
Schools in Northern Ireland are more effective in the implementation of child protection guidelines than their southern counterparts, it has been claimed.
The head of Ireland's National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) Ian Elliott has said that regulations regarding who can work in schools are more comprehensive and more effectively deployed in Northern Ireland than in the Republic.
Mr Elliott told the Irish Times that "several thousand teachers who are currently in post [in Ireland] have never been vetted".
He added that the situation is "very, very, very different" to Northern Ireland, which has "a very tight system in terms of vetting that does not exist in the Republic".
The NBSC is the Catholic Church's official watchdog responsible for child protection in Ireland.
In April 2008 the Northern Ireland's Department for Education announced that responsibility for checks of school employees in the region would pass Police Service of Northern Ireland's Criminal Records Office to an organisation called AccessNI.