Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to deal with this issue. In view of a recent meeting where coroners presented details of more than 40 remains on which they have information but who have not been identified, will the Minister give consideration to the establishment of an office of State forensic pathologist to complement and support the work of the State pathologist, coroners, gardaí and other relevant authorities? Will the Minister make a statement on the matter?

The coroners gave information to the Department in respect of more than 40 remains for which they have information. The information has been available for quite some time. I have raised this issue on quite a number of occasions over the past five or six years. In fact, I set out a detailed document on this more than five years ago which I submitted to the Department. I have been involved in this area for a long number of years. The Law Reform Commission report on missing persons was published in 2013. Following that, I published a Private Member's Bill in 2013 and republished it in 2016. Eventually, the Civil Law (Presumption of Death) Act 2019 was finally passed by the Dáil and Seanad. Where a person went missing but the body was never recovered, the Act allowed parties to apply to the court for a presumption of death order.

There have been a number of cases where bodies were recovered. A person went missing in Dublin in December 2016. A body washed up in July 2017 off the coast of Louth. It took until 2017 to match the information. A person went missing in Limerick and remains were discovered in Clare a number of months later, but again it was quite a number of years before the remains that were found were matched to the identity of the person who went missing.

This office is essential and it would have a number of key roles. The first would be the establishment and maintenance of a database for unidentified human remains. It would provide an annual review of all unidentified human remains and the stage of investigation of each case. It would keep the records of all unidentified remains cases in Ireland and liaise with and act as a contact point for coroners, State pathologists and gardaí to provide advice and ways of identifying human remains. It would also include the establishment and supervision of training programmes for forensic practitioners and supervise interns and students as well as performing standard anthropological analysis. There would also be the issue of cross-Border engagement.

In view of the work coroners have done and the fact we have not co-ordinated all of this over a long number of years, it is now time to set up one central point to deal with this issue. When someone goes missing, it is very difficult for a family to find out after ten, 12 or 15 years that the State or a State authority had information about remains being recovered and that there is a connection. It is time to look at this issue and give serious consideration to the proposal.

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