Dr. Stephen Donoghue:

First, with regard to the landscape here, I am glad Deputy Murnane O'Connor asked that question because it is very relevant. Historically, we were one of the last countries in Europe to establish a DNA database, which is astonishing. That said, in a very short period of time Forensic Science Ireland, FSI, has made tremendous progress. Prior to the FSI coming on board, there was a history of sending our samples to the UK for standard strand displacement reactions, SDRs, Y-chromosome short tandem repeat, Y-STR or mitochondrial profiling. At the same time, while that was going on, we developed within the Irish university landscape, world-class expertise in single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNP, profiling and archaeological paleogenomics. That whole area is making huge strides with regard to identification. Scientists are able to identify remains going back 10,000 years using variations of whole genome sequencing, WGS. Regarding the other expertise, Dr. McCullagh is one of the foremost experts in her field. She has huge expertise with regard to the North.

I will invite Dr. Carlsson to respond on this because he can elaborate further. There is already a template for the type of collaboration that is required. We do not need to bring in external experts, particularly with regard to DNA. In terms of forensic archaeology, Dr. McCullagh and her colleagues have the necessary expertise. We could definitely bring in the expertise from the Irish university system to work with FSI to develop the SNP profiling. I invite Dr. Carlsson to describe the relationship with the FSI and the Garda Technical Bureau and the work done to identify the remains of Thomas Kent, which would be useful to the committee.