Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I do not advance the view that every offence, no matter how trivial, carry the onus to extract DNA from a suspect. With regard to parking or other summary offences, I cannot imagine any reason why it would happen. There are other categories of offences that should not be the subject of a compulsory power to take such a sample.

Generally, in the case of indictable crime, a person arrested should be obliged to provide a DNA sample. Although I am grateful to the work carried out by the Law Reform Commission, I respectfully disagree with it on the following point. I do not believe civil liberties are enhanced by the destruction of a sample of DNA, for example, two, three or four years after it has been obtained. It would be a case of the State disabling itself in the battle against crime to carry out such an action. Recently I became aware of a case where a person was convicted of a serious crime using old evidence, many years after the offence and after the trail had apparently gone cold.

It is not simply a matter of getting convictions on DNA evidence tendered in court. One major advantage of DNA and the dramatic manner in which the technology is changing is that it gives gardaí leads almost immediately at the scene of a crime. People leave traces of DNA if they use a door handle to get into a building, if they carry a briefcase or if they go over objects in a bureau, for example. Traces of DNA left behind are very helpful to the Garda Síochána in such circumstances when it is able to match samples to those of known offenders and those who have been arrested previously for serious offences.

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