The Minister for Justice said the Garda Commissioner and he had misgivings about the circumstances in which some DNA evidence was kept.
Mr McDowell said he was working on an ambitious programme to give the Forensic Science Laboratory a new home as rapidly as possible. He hoped to provide facilities in a secure location in the Phoenix Park Garda complex, and he also intended providing proper storage across Ireland of samples and evidence.
He said he expected the promised legislation, providing for the establishment on a statutory basis of a DNA database, would be published later this year.
The Criminal Justice (Forensic Science) Act 1990, which provides the statutory basis for the taking of samples, only permits an examination regarding particular offences.
The Minister said that, generally, in the case of indictable crime, a person arrested should be obliged to provide a DNA sample. Although he was grateful to the work by the Law Reform Commission, he did not believe civil liberties were enhanced by the destruction of a sample of DNA, for example, two, three or four years after it was obtained. It would be a case of the State disabling itself in the battle against crime to conduct such an action.
Recently, he said, he had become aware of a case where a person was convicted of a serious crime using old evidence, many years after the offence and after the trail was apparently cold.
He said he could not comment on individual persons or cases, but agreed the basis on which people volunteered information or samples should not be abused.
