I welcome the Garda Commissioner to the meeting. I join the Chairman in condemning yesterday's attack and wishing gardaí and their colleagues in Northern Ireland every success in bringing the people who carried it out to justice within a short time.

I came to this meeting to discuss an issue that Deputy Fitzpatrick also raised, that being, unidentified bodies or human remains. For the past 12 months, I have been pushing for a centralised database to be established. I had the person who approached me about this matter deal directly with the Department of Justice and Equality on it. That person has forensic experience. My understanding is that the matter has been progressing.

As I understand it, if a body is found in Cork and the identity of the individual is not established, that information stays in Cork. In a number of cases in the past two years by putting two and two together human remains discovered many years ago were identified. In an article inThe Sunday Times in the past few weeks it was stated an official from the Department of Justice and Equality did not see the necessity for establishing a centralised database of information on unidentified bodies. I am very concerned about this. What is the Commissioner's view on the issue? My understanding is that when a body is recovered and not identified, the information stays within the coroner's area. What I have been pushing for is for all of the information to be centralised in order that there would be joined-up thinking in trying to match information. For instance, there were two cases in the past 12 months. One involved a person who had disappeared in Limerick in 2000. The remains were washed up in County Clare nine months later, but it took 17 years for somebody to put two and two together. The other case involved a person who had gone missing in Dublin about ten or 11 years ago. Three months after they had gone missing, remains were washed up in County Louth, but nobody put two and two together until last year. These are the two cases about which I am talking. Does the Commissioner have a view on establishing a centralised database where all forensic information would be kept such that there would be a direct link for anybody who wished to do a cross-check to access information immediately?