DNA sampling ‘will help solve rape cases’

THE head of the Forensic Science Laboratory, who will oversee the planned DNA database, has described how a mass “screening” or sampling of people may be carried out to help solve rape cases.

Director of the state laboratory Dr Sheila Willis played down suggestions that storing people’s genetic codes could impact on the rights of the innocent.

Investigators will only be able to match DNA profiles or codes on the database and not search for characteristics of suspects like hair colour or ethnicity.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner, Dr Willis described radical changes in recent years in the forensic investigation of crime, including a rise in drug cases, gang crime and the use of DNA profiling.

Legislation for the DNA database, currently going through the Houses of the Oireachtas, will allow for the screening of groups of people linked to a major crime scene, she explained:

“If you were investigating stranger rape and there was a profile, there might be a reason to do a mass screening of a group of people for elimination purposes in relation to that. The Bill will allow for those kind of situations,” Dr Willis said.

The profiling of suspects would not reveal personal characteristics but rather store their identity like a series of numbers, she said.

“I don’t have a concern about innocent people being affected by the database because I see it just as a tool of actually making Garda investigations more efficient.”

The database will include samples from more than 3,000 prisoners, former inmates jailed for serious crime, as well as people suspected of a crime carrying five years or more.

Specialist gardaí as well as workers at the Forensic Science Laboratory will also have their DNA sampled and stored, for elimination purposes in investigations.

Dr Willis believes the database will boost the successful prosecution of minor crimes like burglary or car theft, and reduce the amount of Garda time spent on more serious cases like gun crime.

“Supposing there was an unidentified profile on a weapon. If that gets a hit on a database it helps the gathering of intelligence information. It might even be the shooter’s DNA or somebody who handled the gun.”

Dr Willis warned that if sampling for the database was restricted, especially in relation to testing minor crime suspects, it could end up as a “very limited tool” for gardaí.