Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is to examine the law to establish a way of preserving evidence in cases where a single witness may be crucial to many trials.
Mr McDowell made the announcement following the State's decision to drop a manslaughter prosecution against Dermot Laide today.
Mr Laide was due to be retried in connection with the incident that resulted in the death of student Brian Murphy outside Club Anabel in Dublin nearly six years ago.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell
However, counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions today entered a nolle prosequi- no prosecution - in the case, admitting there had been evidential difficulties.
It was claimed in the media at the weekend that one reason for dropping the case was the unavailability of former State pathologist Prof John Harbison, who is ill.
However, in a statement outside the Dublin Circuit Criminal court, Dermot Laide said he believed a new report issued by current State pathologist Marie Cassidy on Friday was the real reason the prosecution was halted.
Following her own examination of the postmortem tests and photographs came to the conclusion that the injuries to Mr Murphy were not sufficient in themselves to cause death and that they may have been complicated by alcohol-induced breathing problems.
Speaking as he published the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2006, Mr McDowell said he did not want to say much about the issue.
"These matters are matters for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who makes his decisions independently of me," he said.
"Secondly, that the DPP makes decisions based on his perceptions of what is fair in any individual case. Thirdly, I don't want to comment on Dr Harbison, or indeed on the statement made by Dermot Laide today, or the report he attached to his statement.
"I don't want to discuss those matters because really I think they are matters for others to discuss.
"I will look at the law to see if there is a way of preserving evidence in cases which is consistent with the right of fair trial and which, nonetheless, in the case of a single witness whose evidence might cover a huge variety of cases, preserves society's interest in having a fair trial, and that not being knocked on the head by . . . random or unpredictable events," Mr McDowell added.
"At the moment, there is a very limited right in law to depose a witness, where there is reason to believe that the witness may or may not be available to give evidence in a criminal trial.
"But clearly in other cases where on a totally unpredictable basis, if a witness whose evidence is central to, say 50 trials, gets run over, there is no way in advance that you would know that that risk is about to occur."
The Minister said that if there were people who had a role in perhaps hundreds of cases at a time that "there is a case for considering some system of preserving their evidence to the maximum possible extent consistent with the rights of an accused person.
"It's a very complex issue and it's not one that's easily resolved. It's easy to say there's an issue, but it's not so easy to come up with the solution."
Asked whether the public could be sure the evidence Dr Harbison gave towards the end of his career was "sound" if Dr Marie Cassidy had made completely different findings, Mr McDowell said: "I don't want to get involved in comments on that. But I have looked at the material that was published today and really don't want to get into a controversy about whether one person was right or another person was wrong.
Michael McDowell
Asked if there were other cases that might be affected by Dr Harbison's unavailability, Mr McDowell said he simply did not know.
Asked whether "any concern" was ever expressed to the Department of Justice as regards the medical status of Prof Harbison prior to today's case, Mr McDowell responded: "I believe that in recent months some concerns were expressed. At the time, I understand that the Director of Public Prosecutions decided to have all the cases that he was involved in dealt with and expedited.
"There are a few cases where retrials are coming back and the Laide case is one of those."
Mr McDowell said Prof Harbison is known to him and is a person for whom he had great personal affection and respect ,and he wished him well.