Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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2302. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if she will undertake a review of the restriction on using first cousin DNA to link with the DNA of babies exhumed from the Tuam mother and baby home site; if she has considered whether there might be recent developments in scientific evidence which would enhance reliability of DNA linking; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41331/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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In October 2022 the Government made an Order under the Institutional Burials Act 2022 to direct the establishment of an office to oversee the excavation, recovery, post-recovery analysis, identification (if possible) and reburial of the children’s remains at the site of the former Mother and Baby institution in Tuam. In March 2023 the Office of Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT) was formally established, and, in May 2023 the Director was appointed to head up that office.

The 2022 Act provides that eligible family members may participate in an Identification Programme. The legislation defines an eligible family member as a person who has reasonable grounds to believe that he/she is a child, parent, sibling, half-sibling, grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, half-niece, half-nephew, grandniece or grandnephew of the person who is buried at an intervention site.

In developing the legislation, the list of family members who can participate in an Identification Programme was significantly expanded from what was set out in the original General Scheme.

The Act takes full account of recommendations put forward during the Pre-Legislative Scrutiny process and reflects a further expansion that was made during the legislative process in line with scientific advice. That advice outlined a justification for the expansion of the list of eligible family members in line with technological developments but highlighted scientific challenges in relation to the inclusion of cousins.

Forensic Science Ireland has invested in the latest DNA technologies and is liaising with global experts to support the Tuam Identification Programme. However, I understand that these challenges, as set out below, remain.

In the case of cousins, it is understood that the variation in shared DNA can be much greater as the common ancestor is the grandparent rather than the parent. This makes it notably more difficult to draw conclusions about a familial link as, at the lower levels, first cousins will be indistinguishable from more distant relatives.

Further issues arise in the context of the likely low levels of DNA that will be available from remains, due to degradation and the size of the bones involved, as well as the general level of relatedness in a country like Ireland. These factors increase uncertainty in estimating relationships, particularly relationships, such as cousins, where the variability in shared DNA is greater. The inclusion of relatives with greater variability in shared DNA would increase the risk of incorrect conclusions being drawn in respect of a familial relationship.

These issues do not arise to the same extent in commercial genealogical matching services. Those services compare DNA between living persons where good quantities of non-degraded DNA are available and very few pairs of individuals in the large and global DNA database are likely to be closely related.

It should be noted that the legislation provides that family members, not limited to the participants in an Identification Programme, are provided with regular updates on developments at the site by the Director. In addition, final arrangements for remains that are recovered but not identified will have regard to the wishes of persons who believe they have family members buried at the site.