The ad hoc approach to the employment of child minders in hotels is "completely unacceptable" and leaves the hotel babysitting system wide open to abuse from paedophiles, according to the chief executive of the ISPCC, Paul Gilligan.

"This is highly alarming, " he said. "Hotels are offering unsupervised access to a person who may well be alone in a bedroom with children. This could be a very easy way for a paedophile to get access to children. It's completely unsatisfactory, unregulated, and parents shouldn't use it."

Gilligan said the transient nature of the industry increases the "vulnerability factor".

"If a family from France stays in an Irish hotel, and a child is abused by a babysitter, then it will be much more difficult to trace the abuser if they are not well known to the hotel, " he said.

In the Sunday Tribune survey of 100 hotels around Ireland, almost half asked for only a few personal details from a potential babysitter, without any mention of a CV, references or the need for an interview.