ISAA Membership

A lot of work was done to affiliated the colleges to the IAAA. It seems a bit extreme to drop everything before seeing
what other solutions there are.
- Granted, but having each club vet every individual that joins is the most extreme worst case solution. I don't think
ye have a chance in hell of the colleges allowing ye to do it yourselves, ye have zero security for the data and records
that ye will recieve, and it will be viewed as children vetting children and puts extremely private information in danger
of becoming public knowledge. How and where is all this information going to be stored, who has access, what happens
when people leave the club or just stop showing up, you have a very fast turn over of people running college clubs.
What happens (in detail) to appeals and what happens if any piece of private data is made public (ie, the vetting officer
ever tells ANYONE a single piece of information he has read). What happens if anyone fails the vetting, what do ye do,
what do you tell people, who do you tell about why the person failed etc. What do ye need to tell people when they are
signing up and are asking for their permission to vet them, i presume ye need to tell them what its for (checking for
peadophiles), who will be doing the vetting (some random 3rd year student) and how/where the information will be kept.
All these questions and more, need to be addressed in major detail before ye can even consider if ye should do this.
You will need to permission of your colleges to do this also.


You may not be able to use IAAA judges. The IV shoots will be removed from the calendar and there will be nothing
to stop someone else running a shoot on the same day so there may not be any free judges. Also the judges could say
no to doing your shoots. I'm not saying they will but IV shoots would be given the lowest priority.
Well in the seven years I was involved, any many years before my time, we we never associated with the IAAA and
there was never a single problem. Also ye can easily just use past university archers to judge the compeitions you know.

You will loose the 10Eur shooting only fee.
- Oh nooes!

Clubs who run outdoor shoots not on their own campus wont be able to anymore such as DIT who use Dublin Archers field.
- Fair point, though these are rare enough that you only need 1 college capable of holding them, GMIT can i imagine.

The vetting process for archery was decided upon by the gardai not by the IAAA.
- But it appears that the college clubs only need to do it because of your association with the IAAA, which is easy to drop.

At the delegates meeting two answers were given in regards to the colleges being vetted.
You could potentially knock it down to a handful of people.
- This is where you might have a chance, if the way it worked was for the IAAA itself to vet the few main people
in each club, then that would work fine. But there is just no way ye can have each individual college club vetting
every member that joins, its not even remotely viable. Even if ye could come up with viable method of doing it and
your colleges all allowed ye to do it, it would kill membership in your clubs. People would be going around to clubs at
fairs day, arrive at the archery stand, looks cool, €5, sign me up, at which point you would have to explain, properly,
that they would also need to sign their consent to allow that pimply 3rd year student behind the desk have access to
their secure garda records so he could look it over and decide if they were a potential peadophile. Yip, that will be a
big seller.

Has ANYONE actually talked to their colleges about this vetting process? Got their colleges permission to
consider having a vetting officer, and how it would be done. It seriously looks like everyone is just talking
in circles and noone has actually begun the process of seeing what can and what needs to be done.

Stop talking and get the job done.

IAAA are to hold a meeting with the ISAA to discuss the implementation of vetting in our clubs.

In non vetting matters but still ISAA related have recently contacted CUSAI (college univarsity sports association of Ireland). They are more than willing to help us and they can provide certain best practices policies inc years grace but they do recommend that college clubs are members of the national governing body.
In case I start getting hounded for being proactive the reason I contacted them is that UCD have asked that I confirm the Intervarsity status of the competition I've booked in the hall. CUSAI are the body who confirm the Intervarsity status of cmpetitions.
Any comments?

MOD NOTE: I've copied this comment into a new thread all to itself, it deserves its own for what could be a big discussion. To comment on this please post here.

All the major issues regarding to vetting were discussed at the meeting. The session was an informal questions and answers session At the end, each line manager was sent back to their respective club with the task of discussing vetting with their members and if they have any further questions they can contact the national vetting officer. If enough questions remain unanswered another training day will take place.
As for posting here the issues of the meeting there is not enough space, time and I feel it is not the correct forum. The IAAA is still finalising their rules in regard to vetting and publicly argueing the resulting teething problems with people who are not IAAA members could lead to even more problems.

toxof wrote: »

If people have nothing to hide then they should not be worried

For 99% of people that is true, their police file will contain little more than their age and address. However the remaining 1% might have extremely sensitive information on their police file that has nothing to do with their safety around kids in archery but that information will be viewed by 19-20 year old college student. So it needs to be clear how that information will be stored, who will view it, and what legal rights does the individual have if the vetting officer so much as makes a hint about that personal information to anyone, ever.

Example case, someones father is in jail, vetting officer sees that on the file. Months later some archery night out, drunk vetting officer whispers to the individual "I know about your dad!", can the individual concerned sue the ass off the vetting officer and the club itself, perhaps also the University and IAAA?

toxof wrote: »

If all this vetting prevents one kid from being abused, then its worth it!

Thats making it a bit too simplistic, what if the cost of saving that one kid, is ruining the lifes of 10 other people (as in causing a suicide etc) which is just as likely an outcome as saving the kid. But thats not really anything to do with the discussion, just being picky on that one, people should not assume the side effects are less than the good goal being aimed for. Some good goals do cost (I don't mean money) too much to be implemented.

Anyways back to the discussion the question is:
What are the full and exact details being proposed for the vetting in terms of College Archery Clubs. What are the opinions and options given by the IAAA and the Coleges to the clubs to meet each of the requirements. Without that information we can only go in circles, there isn't really anything else to say.

@Sparks, if the IAAA, College and the ISAA are still unsure on the answers to those questions, if they are still doing alot of back on furth on what will happen, then there is nothing wrong with them holding back talking about it on the forum. There is a difference in not talking about it because it is not refined enough to take public, and hiding the information because they can't answer the questions that might be asked. I'm sure they will make it public once they start to know what might be implemented, and want people to ask questions they might not have thought off, so they can have the solutions before the policy goes live.

tenacious-me wrote: »

The individual Line manager(Vetting Officer) from each club will never be shown or told any individuals details, the only person that will see anyones file is the IAAAs national Line Manager, who will, if there is a problem with someones record, simply inform the clubs' line manager with a yes or no.
The individual will be informed of the Refusal by the National line manager and will be given the chance to reply, in writing, I hope that answers a few questions...

Thanks, some solid information at last, previous info indicated that each club vetting officer would have total and sole access to all the data for their club. What you indicate is a much clearer better system, that should be acceptable and workable.

A few questions on implementation details though:
- What sort of information will be on the files that the National Officer receives? I've no idea what would be on the files the garda send.

- How will the files/data be stored, or will it be destroyed after the Yes/No decision has being reached by the National Line Officer.

- I presume the way it would work for ISAA, is that when people signup to the club (or a few weeks into the academic year) they fill in a form giving their name, address,...?, to vetting officer in the club, who sends the form to the National Line Officer, who then get that persons file from the Garda and reviews it, give the result to the club Vetting Officer. The club vetting officer then tells the person they have passed or failed the review. If they failed the review then the person is required to not attend the club anymore. Is this the procedure imagined? Oh and when the person is given the form to fill in, what exactly (word for word) will they be told, to explain what is being done and why it is required (it shouldn't be to hard to word this to be fairly clear without scaring people off :P)

- If a person fails the vetting, does the club officer need to tell their college? As if anything did happen by the person in another club, and it was found out they had failed vetting by the archery club, but that nothing had being done to stop the person from attending other clubs, it could cause trouble. But it might not be legally allowed to inform the college, ye should ask the college about that when ye are getting their permissions to do this.

- If a person fails the vetting, how does the appeal process work, in detail. The person has only got a Yes/No, so their first question will be 'Why?'. What info will they be sent, by whom, in what time frame limits, and what in detail is the full process for appeals from there onwards. Detailing at all stages, who is doing what, what information is being sent, what locations meetings will be held with individual (Appeals officer will travel to the individual or vise-versa), etc. You get the idea, a fully detailed process. Also there is no way the National Line Manager can make the decision and handle the appeals, has to have an independent oversight of some kind. What happens if they go to the college itself instead of the channels you imagine they should go to. Ye will need to get the college to agree that if someone complains to the college that the college then directs the person back onto the right appeals channel.

- Has the procedures and questions(with solutions) being detailed and written out for each of the ISAA clubs, so when each individually goes to their Colleges, the clubs knows the situation well enough to be able to present and argue the case strongly enough to not get turned down by their colleges?

- Has a standard information sheet detailing most of this info, in particular the detailed appeals process and contact numbers, being done up and ready to be given to people to take home when they fill in the initial form giving permission to be vetted. Hmm, would probably want to make a double copy of that permission form, so the individual takes one home, one goes to the National Line Manager.

- Oh, and you will need to have a professional Lawyer (in whatever sub-spec this is, constituation law?), to given a written professional assessment of the procedures planned. Do they comply with the government laws about vetting and do they comply with government laws on individuals rights, privacy etc. Not sure if the lawyer can do this, but students in universities might also receive additional rights from the university that might need to be considered, ie, being college students they might have the right to not be vetting by college institutions (which a sports club might be considered to be)

Dermot