DNA laws ready by end of year
The department’s assurance came as the Garda Commissioner stressed the importance to gardaí of having more sophisticated means of proving serious offences.
Commissioner Fachtna Murphy said the days when gardaí could depend on confessions obtained from suspects during questioning to back up their prosecutions were gone because criminals knew how to cite the law to evade questions and were practised in techniques of withstanding pressure to admit responsibility.
“Any modern police force has to rely less and less on confessions because the criminals are more educated, they are more prepared to say nothing, to admit nothing,” he told RTÉ radio at the weekend.
“The challenge then for the gardaí is to develop evidence through other techniques like forensic evidence. I’m looking forward to seeing our own DNA database that will be coming on stream.”
A database, which would hold tissue, blood or other samples from suspects, criminals, missing persons and other individuals involved in investigations, has been promised for over a decade.
In January 2006, then justice minister Michael McDowell announced he had given approval for the drafting of legislation — the Criminal Justice (Forensic Sampling and Evidence) Bill — which he said would be published before the end of that year.
A Department of Justice spokesperson said yesterday, however, the new Christmas target date for publication set earlier this year was realistic.
The Oireachtas will still have to debate and pass the legislation — which will prove controversial because of civil liberties concerns — but it means a national DNA database could be up and running next year.
An €18 million cash allocation for the upgrading of the State Forensics Laboratory and State Pathology Laboratory required to store and process DNA was not affected by the recent budget cutbacks.
The cabinet is expected to push for a progress report on the project when it meets tomorrow. It will also discuss the proposed Surveillance Bill which would allow gardaí use information gathered through phone-tapping, bugs and other means as evidence in court when seeking search and arrest warrants or prosecuting offenders.
Surveillance operations are regularly mounted by gardaí but the evidence gathered is of limited use in court and there are severe restrictions on what the commissioner called “intrusive surveillance”, where devices are planted on a suspect’s private property.
The commissioner has said repeatedly in recent days that the legislation would assist gardaí in tackling serious criminals and in particular the gangland figures, whose identities are well-known to the gardaí but who often arrange to procure guns and drugs and give orders in the privacy of their homes and vehicles.
That law too is likely to prove controversial, however, given the scope for abuse of the powers. Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has conceded the necessary laws are unlikely to be ready for implementation before the second half of next year.
