Dr. Nessa Lynch:

I thank Senator Ruane for her very insightful questions. I will home in on verification points and then hand over the floor to others. This is a very important control. There are international standards for training on forensic face examination. This will be a forensic standard. It is also important to recognise that the initial verification match in the context of the Garda is an intelligence match. Any action to be taken on this would fulfil the normal statutory or common law position on making an arrest or taking further action. For this type of match to go through to a situation where it would be tested in court and form the basis of a formal identification on which a finding or some sort of criminal sanction would eventuate, it would still need to go through the usual rules of evidence. Definitely, as my expert friends have said, there is still a lot of concern about accuracy. There are some controls that can be put in place to mitigate this.