Gardaí renew call for DNA database
Ireland is now the only country in the European Union, apart from Malta, which does not have a DNA database, which is widely used in criminal investigations and missing persons cases.
The Government’s commitment to the database hangs in the balance pending the outcome of cabinet discussions on the budget estimates, which will begin next month.
“We have been highlighting the need for a DNA database for 10 years now and we still do not have one, despite repeated promises from various governments,” said Damian McCarthy, president of the Garda Representative Association (GRA).
“We are fully aware of the financial situation the country is in, but the database will save money by speeding up investigations, by identifying suspects and eliminating suspects, thereby saving garda time and resources.”
He added: “In the modern world, this is becoming an essential tool of policing and we need to keep up to date.”
A spokesman for the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors said: “We deplore the lack of action to bring in a DNA database, which has been acknowledged by various experts and ministers for justice as a great asset in fighting crime.”
In the current edition of the Garda Review, the journal of the GRA, Dr Maureen Smyth, director of DNA at the Forensic Science Laboratory, said DNA databases were “the norm in the developed world as a tool in the investigation of crime”.
She said the situation in Ireland left the country “in the company of Malta as a European Union state without legislation in place”.
She said Ireland was not in a position to comply with a EU council decision in 2007, which decreed that all EU states should be exchanging DNA profiles on an automatic basis by August 2011.
Mr McCarthy said the GRA first called for a DNA database in May 2001.
At a Garda graduation ceremony in November 2002, then justice minister Michael McDowell announced plans to set up such a database.
In 2003, the Law Reform Commission was asked by the government to investigate the implications of a DNA database. It reported in 2005 and recommended a database be set up.
By the end of 2006, plans were published and budgets earmarked to establish the database and build a new Forensic Science Laboratory, which would operate the database.
Repeated promises never materialised and in January 2010, the last government published the Criminal Justice (Forensic Evidence and DNA Database System) Bill 2010.
The cost of the database and the new laboratory has been put at €40 million.
Justice Minister Alan Shatter has said he wants to proceed with the laboratory and the database, but provisions have not been made for them and this would be decided by the Cabinet in discussing the estimates.
