Irish staff training records: seven years or four, depending on the centre

If you run designated centres in Ireland and you hold one retention policy for staff training records, it is wrong for one of your services. The two main sets of regulations put the staff training record in different schedules, and those schedules carry different retention clocks — seven years in older persons' services, four in disability services. Same document, same provider, two statutory timetables.

Older persons' centres: not less than seven years

For designated centres for older people the governing instrument is S.I. No. 415 of 2013, published at irishstatutebook.ie.

Regulation 21(1) requires that the records in Schedules 2, 3 and 4 are kept in the centre and "are available for inspection by the Chief Inspector". The staff training record sits in Schedule 4, paragraph 8 — "A record of all persons currently and previously employed at the designated centre", which at subparagraph (c) includes "a record of staff training".

Regulation 21(5) then assigns the records in Schedule 4 paragraphs (7) and (8) a retention period of "not less than 7 years from the date of their making". So the staff training record in an older persons' centre carries a seven-year clock, running from when the record was made.

There is a second, longer duty in the same regulation. Schedule 2 item 3 covers "Details and documentary evidence of any relevant qualifications or accredited training of the person", and regulation 21(2) requires Schedule 2 records to be retained for not less than seven years after the staff member has ceased to be employed in the centre. For a long-serving employee that is considerably more than seven years from the date the certificate was issued.

Disability centres: not less than four years

For designated centres for persons with disabilities the instrument is S.I. No. 367 of 2013, at irishstatutebook.ie. The structure looks the same and the outcome is not.

Here the staff training record appears in Schedule 4 at paragraph 12 — "A record of attendance at staff training and development". Regulation 21(4) assigns the records in Schedule 4 paragraphs (6), (11), (12), (13) and (14) a retention period of "not less than 4 years from the date of their making".

So the training attendance record is a four-year record in a disability centre and a seven-year record in an older persons' centre, because the drafters put it in a differently-numbered paragraph. The Schedule 2 seven-years-after-leaving duty for qualifications applies in both.

One further provision in the disability regulations has no equivalent in the older persons' set: regulation 21(6) requires records relating to children in care to be kept in perpetuity and transferred to the Executive not later than seven years from the date the child ceased to reside in the centre.

Why this is easy to get wrong

Three reasons, and all of them are structural rather than careless.

• The regulations are near-identical in layout. Both have a regulation 16 on training access and supervision, both have a regulation 21 on records, both have four schedules. Reading one and assuming the other matches is a reasonable mistake that produces a wrong answer.
• Regulation 16 says nothing about records at all. It is the training regulation, so it is where people look. The retention duty is in regulation 21, two paragraphs deep into a schedule cross-reference.
• The commonly-repeated claim is that no period is specified. That is simply not true in Ireland. The periods are specified, in statute, with numbers.

What to do about it

The practical answer is not to run two policies, which invites the wrong one being applied. It is to hold a single policy at the longer of the two periods and document why. Retaining a disability centre's training attendance record for seven years exceeds the four-year statutory minimum and breaches nothing; the regulations set floors, not ceilings. Data protection considerations do apply to holding personal information longer than necessary, so the justification for the longer period should be written down rather than assumed.

Three checks worth running against your current policy:

• Does it distinguish the training attendance record from the qualification evidence? They are in different schedules with different triggers — one runs from the date of the record, the other from the end of employment.
• Does the clock start on the right event? "From the date of their making" is not the same as from the end of the training year, and not the same as from the inspection.
• Does it survive a staff member leaving? The Schedule 2 duty outlives the employment relationship by seven years, which means leaver files cannot be cleared on departure.

For how training records are structured for inspection, see our training records matrix for Irish healthcare employers and our guide to HIQA inspections and staff training. For how registrant-side retention compares across regulators, see how long CPD evidence must be kept.