A review of over 3,000 inspection reports of creches and other pre-school services has found that creches were non-compliant with one in seven of the inspected regulations.

Garda vetting and staff-to-child ratios emerged as common areas of non compliance which the author of the report Dr Sinéad Hanafin, stressed that most pre-school services - 74 per cent - were compliant with most regulations.

However, she said there was an “urgent need” to address issues around garda vetting, children’s safety and the volume, content and extent of the records kept by pre-school services to ensure they are comprehensive and up-to-date.

Research published today on 3,007 pre-school inspections including play groups, nurseries, creches and day care services for under-sevens, examined over 81,000 regulations,13.7 per cent of which were found to be non-compliant.

In a further 7.8 per cent of cases the regulations were not-applicable to the service being inspected, 1.1 per cent of regulations were not assessed and in 3.3 per cent of cases it was not stated whether the regulation had been complied with or not.

Almost half of all services were found to be non-compliant with regulation 8 - the regulation which covers staff-child ratios and garda vetting - with 46 per cent non compliance in this area.

In the in-depth analysis of 500 inspections the report’s author found that garda vetting had emerged as a particularly problematic issue for temporary staff and those who had lived abroad.

Another high level of non-compliance arose around safety issues with a 43 per cent non-compliance level in this area.

Examples included a case where there was potential for unauthorised access to a pre-school because the code was written beside a keypad and the potential for children to access hazards including a case where a large box of matches was accessible to children and another where a sharp knife was accessible in a kitchen drawer.

Regional variations were identified: Dublin North East region had the highest level of non-compliance, failing to comply with 23.2 per cent of regulations while HSE West recorded the lowest level of non-compliance, with a 9.3 per cent.

Two reports, both of which are authored by Dr Sinéad Hanafin for the Tusla, Child and Family Agency examined inspections conducted over a 17-month period from January 2012 to May 2013.

Dr Hanafin recommended that consideration should be given to the breadth and range of sanctions available to inspectors to ensure compliance.