A total of 920 criminal investigations were assisted last year as a result of “hits” on the State’s DNA database, according to official figures.
The latest annual report of the DNA Database System Oversight Committee reveals 759 DNA samples from either suspects and offenders or crime scenes were matched with forensic evidence from one or more other crime scenes by officials from Forensic Science Ireland during 2021.
It claimed the crime solving capacity of the DNA database was continuing to grow and by the end of last year, 48 out of every 100 crime scene samples were linked to a person.
