Ireland joins DNA sharing system in fight against crime

Irish authorities can now assist in the investigation and prosecution of criminals in other countries by providing identification evidence, under legal changes.

Ireland joins DNA sharing system in fight against crime

Irish authorities can now assist in the investigation and prosecution of criminals in other countries by providing identification evidence, under legal changes.

Gardaí will also be able to receive DNA profiles and fingerprint IDs from other police forces to assist them.

This will help the investigation and prosecution of serious offences, including gangland crime, organised burglary and theft, drug trafficking and sex offending.

The provisions bring Ireland into line with existing arrangements following a lengthy preparation and testing phase.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan signed a commencement order in respect of international cooperation provisions under the Criminal Justice (Forensic Evidence and DNA Database System) Act 2014.

“The commencement of the remaining provisions in the 2014 DNA Act represents a very significant development in assisting An Garda Síochána, and indeed police forces in other jurisdictions, in the investigation of crime,” said Mr Flanagan.

“The coming into operation of these legal provisions will facilitate the exchange of DNA profiles and other identification evidence with other states.”

He said this will assist in combating terrorism and cross-border crime.

While the bulk of the 2014 Act became operational by November 2015, the provisions in relation to the automated exchange of identification information were not.

Detailed technical and administrative work was done, including a peer-to-peer evaluation, piloting and testing the exchange of data, checking data protection requirements and EU Council approval, with the latter occurring last month.

Under the system, access to the national DNA database and automated fingerprint information system is controlled and in line with data protection law.

Searches are conducted by officers authorised for that purpose, using DNA profiles or fingerprint data that do not contain any identifying information on the person concerned.

If a search reveals a match between the data supplied and the data contained in the database being searched, the information is shared under the mutual assistance framework provided under the Criminal Justice (Mutual Assistance) Act 2008.

The 2014 Act made changes to this legislation to ensure the persons whose DNA profiles or other forensic identification data is shared with other countries have a comparable level of safeguards as is available to people subject of criminal investigations in Ireland.

The data can be shared with designated states, currently other EU countries, Iceland and Norway.

Ireland's national DNA Database System has been operational for three years and is maintained by Forensic Science Ireland.

The database enables the matching of DNA profiles from crime scenes (known as crime stains) with DNA profiles uploaded from individuals under criminal investigation, convicted criminals and former offenders.

As of the beginning of November this year, the database contained 16,361 DNA profiles of suspected offenders and convicted offenders, along with 4,971 crime stain profiles.

There have been 1,825 person-to-stain matches to date, with a crime stain match effective rate of 36.7%. This rate measures the crime-solving capacity – meaning that 37 out of every 100 crime stains uploaded to the database were linked to a person.

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