Mr. Carl Buckley:

I appreciate and agree that there is scope within the legislation under head 32 insofar as a criminal investigation is concerned. There is no objection in principle to any exhumation or excavation being stopped if it is to be passed over to the Garda. We need to acknowledge, however, that that in itself creates potential problems because if the site is handed over, once that exhumation or excavation has already commenced it will potentially have contaminated the site from the point of view of a criminal investigation. There should be an acknowledgement that every single site is potentially a scene of a potential crime. That is the way it should be approached in the first instance, and I expand on this in much more detail in my submission. If we treat each site as a potential crime scene from the outset, it ensures that the strict procedures for evidence collation and searching will be adhered to automatically instead of this potentially being an afterthought. There is therefore potential for the legislation in its current form to prejudice any criminal investigation that might be required thereafter. By way of example, the legislation in its current form provides focus on employees of the agency being empowered to extract DNA. There is no mention of any other specialist, and I referred specifically to forensic anthropologists, although, again, I accept that there are agencies empowered within that legislation to hire consultants or specialists where needed.

However, there is a risk that, without the necessary qualifications and experience, the requisite expertise to conclude that there have been violent or unnatural circumstances insofar as a death is concerned will be missing, as it may simply be a case of taking DNA from skeletal remains. As much as there is scope within the legislation to make a handover for the purposes of criminal investigation, I suggest that we should be considering a criminal investigation first rather than it being an afterthought. If we take Tuam on its own, how can 700 babies be anything other than a potential crime scene? Therefore, we are approaching this matter from the wrong angle immediately.