Policy demo: a portable vetting status

Three fictional volunteers. Ask the simulated scheme about each one and look at exactly what an organisation would — and would not — receive.

• Three answers only. A checking organisation gets valid, expired or review required — never contents, never reasons, never history.
• Three-year renewal cycle. Status lapses to expired automatically; re-vetting refreshes it. Continuous accuracy replaces one-off paperwork.
• Risk categories, not one-size-fits-all. A child-facing coaching role and a once-a-year fun-run marshal need not carry identical burdens; the scheme records the category the vetting covered.
• Specified information stays with the State. When new information is under assessment the answer is simply review required — the organisation pauses, and no private detail travels.
• The person stays in control of everything else. Identity details and address history move only by consent, as the working demo on this site shows.

• Volume keeps climbing. The National Vetting Bureau has reported processing over 600,000 applications in 2025 — a workload a portable status would cut sharply, because the same people would no longer be vetted afresh for every role.
• The Department is already using the language. Reform proposals have discussed letting a vetting disclosure be shared between roles in the same risk category — exactly the risk-category design this simulation demonstrates.
• Cross-border checks now add real delay. Since EU criminal-records exchange (ECRIS) checks became part of vetting for applicants with time abroad, individual applications can wait on foreign authorities. A once-per-cycle portable status absorbs that delay once, instead of every organisation re-triggering it.
• A statutory review exists but has not reported. The promised review of the vetting Acts gives the Oireachtas a ready-made vehicle — the ask is to put portability and renewal cycles inside its terms of reference.

The National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012 ties each vetting disclosure to the registered organisation that requested it, and provides no portable status between organisations. Making vetting portable therefore needs legislation — which is why this demonstration exists: to make the gap, and the fix, easy to see in twelve minutes.