Dr. Niamh McCullagh:

I cannot speak to the laboratory processes in terms of DNA once that starts, but in terms of a pre-laboratory procedure, looking specifically at Tuam which is, of course, probably the most complex site that the legislation will have to deal with, the timeframe that we in the expert technical group put forward for this was a six-to-12 month period on-site. The time that would be required in the laboratory for the analysis of the remains, not DNA analysis, was not possible to determine because we do not know the number of individuals who will be recovered from that scenario. Unfortunately, an exact answer to the Senator's question for each process is not determinable at present simply because we do not know how many individuals we are dealing with.