Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The legislation has been sent for drafting and I hope to publish it in the summer of this year. I agree with the Deputy that this is a very important area of science and criminology. I am working at the moment on an ambitious programme to give the Forensic Science Laboratory, an important State service, a new home, and to do so as rapidly as I possibly can. I hope to provide facilities in a secure location in the Phoenix Park Garda complex, as part of a building programme, as speedy as the one responsible for the four-storey building that was erected in Templemore, and to expedite the transformation of the Forensic Science Laboratory into an institution with every possible technical and housing requirement fulfilled.

I also intend to provide for the proper storage across Ireland of samples and evidence because, at the moment, the Garda Commissioner and I have misgivings about the circumstances in which some evidence is kept. I assure Deputy Jim O'Keeffe that this is a priority, though I have not had the opportunity until now to indicate so. It is something on which I, the Commissioner and my colleagues in Government are anxious to make early progress.

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