The Garda Commissioner has said that while the force may consider the purchase of a cadaver dog for use in searches and murder investigations in the future, it currently has no plans to do so now.
Drew Harris said cadaver dogs have only been used three times in the seven years he has been commissioner.
A cadaver dog, he said, is a very specialised resource and is not out every day working like a drugs, firearms or money dog.
Mr Harris said that while An Garda Síochána might consider one in the future as it does not want to be reliant on others, but, he pointed out, other police services might then seek to rely on gardaí.
The commissioner also said a cadaver dog was not brought in for the first search in 2017 of the house where Tina Satchwell’s remains were found six years later, because while gardaí suspected harm had been caused to her, they did not suspect her body was in the house.
Earlier, the Training Officer with Search and Rescue Dog Association Ireland (North) said that there are four specially trained cadaver dogs in Northern Ireland.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Ralph O'Connor said the association is always available to work with any police force to search for human remains.
He said training a cadaver search dog "is arduous", but if done full-time a dog could be trained in around 22 weeks.
The members of the association are volunteers, so it would take them around a year to train a cadaver search dog "to present to our national body for qualification", he added.
Mr O'Connor said that any dog can be trained to search for human remains once it has a high play or prey drive.
"Obviously we want a dog that's got a high play drive or prey drives and typical breeds like collies, Labs, springers, sprockers, Shepherds, German Malinois, Belgian Malinois. They would be your typical breeds, but all dogs would have the ability if they've got that high drive and as an organisation we have lots of different breeds in our organisation that do all these various search roles with their dogs."
He said that there is a need for more specially trained dogs on the island of Ireland as four is not sufficient for the population.
"There's always work to be done in terms of having resilience for search and rescue. Obviously, there's various aspects within that where there's always a need for more. And in fact, we've worked for the last 20-30 years all over the island of Ireland for various historical missing person searches.
"So, I would suspect we would need far greater numbers than that, but as an organisation we're always available to work with whatever police force and whatever organisation call and requires our assistance. We're more than happy to help," he said.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
