An untraced missing person is a matter of great concern to all in this House. While most missing women are traced, I realise that even with numbers of missing women in single figures in each of these years, with 1991 and 1993 recording the highest number at four each, there are traumatised families who must continue to live not knowing what has happened to a loved one.
The case of every missing person, whether male or female, is followed up by the Garda. The total number of people who have gone missing in each of the years 1995-6 are 1,578 in 1994, 1,444 in 1995 and 1,848 in 1996. All of these have been traced except for 13 in 1995, 12 in 1995 and eight in 1996. The majority of those untraced in each of those years are male. The Garda Síochána advise me that it does not need a specialised unit to trace missing women. The Garda Commissioner is responsible for the deployment of his forces and personnel and constantly reviews Garda structures.
We do not know whether those missing are the victims of crime; they may have decided to leave home. One can surmise that something terrible has happened to some of them, but there is no certainty about the reasons for their absence until evidence is produced that they are still alive or sadly dead.
The Garda recently reviewed the structure of the specialist units attached to Garda headquarters and the central detective unit at Harcourt Square. This review arose from trends emerging in different forms of criminal activity. Following the review, the expertise and resources available to these units have now been combined to form the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation under the control of a chief superintendent. The resources of the unit will be available to investigate any serious crime, and to trace missing women, should a local district officer require it. This is in addition to the existing specialist services available in the form of finger print, ballistic, photography and forensic expertise at the Garda headquarters.
The Garda Commissioner reviewed the different specialist units available to him and has brought a number of them together to create this bureau so that cases of missing persons where there is suspicion of criminal activity can be investigated. The files of the untraced people I have listed will remain open until some trace of them has been found.