Pathologist: Travel cutbacks may lead to errors

Cutbacks have forced the country’s leading forensic expert to drive up to four hours at a time to attend murder scenes, it emerged today.

State Pathologist Marie Cassidy revealed she no longer had access to a chauffeur driven garda car when called out to homicides.

And the Glasgow-born professor said it was a burden to have to face four-hour long journeys before conducting painstaking fingertip forensic searches.

“But to be perfectly fair, over the last couple of years the guards have been marvellous and they have provided transport if I have to go down the country,” the professor said.

“But unfortunately cutbacks means that I am back on the bus again I’m afraid. It’s a burden, it really is.”

Prof Cassidy, who took over her role from Prof John Harbison almost two years ago, said the stress of travelling hundreds of miles and battling through traffic would put extra pressure on her work.

And she said there was always a worry among forensic scientists that mistakes would be made due to tiredness.

Prof Cassidy said: “When people call you maybe at nine o’clock at night you think, by the time I get down there it’s one or two in the morning, what if you make a mistake because I’m not on the ball?

“You are always worried particularly if based on your evidence someone is being charged with a crime, what if you don’t get it right.”

Prof Cassidy, who has examined mass graves in war stricken countries like Bosnia for the UN War Crimes Tribunal, said there was always the pressure that your opinion on the cause of death would be at odds with another expert view.

“You give your decision and base your opinion on the facts of the case and your own expertise and the wealth of experience you have. But somebody else may have a very different interpretation of the injuries,” she said.