Relatives as distant as half nieces and half nephews will be able to be matched to remains recovered in the exhumation at the Tuam mother and baby homes, as €4m worth of state of the art DNA technology is to be acquired by forensic investigators.
However, legal guidelines governing the Tuam investigation, under the Institutional Burials Act 2022, provide for the collection of DNA only from closer relatives such as grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.
The remains of hundreds of children, ranging in age from 35 foetal weeks to between two and three years, were buried in a series of underground chambers at the home between 1925 and 1961.
In 2016, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes determined more than 800 young children died in the Galway institution during its operation.
Following the commission’s report, the Government committed to exhuming and attempting to identify every set of remains before handing them over to family members for burial.
Forensic Science Ireland (FSI ), the State’s primary forensic laboratory has acquired “forensic genetic genealogy,” DNA sequencing kits. These will allow scientists to extract DNA from historic skeletal remains, potentially even if they are a century old.
It will then be cross-referenced against a DNA database being established by the Government. This voluntary database will collect samples from people who believe a relative may have been buried at the site.
The technology will allow for DNA extraction from a “range of challenging forensic sample types such as degraded blood, bones and teeth”, a request for tender document from FSI states.
The new DNA sequencing method will allow FSI scientists, at a minimum, to match remains to “third degree relatives”, a category which includes great-grandchildren, first cousins and half-nieces and nephews.
However, this may prove problematic as the Institutional Burials Act 2022, provides for the collection of DNA only from closer relatives such as grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.
