justice report
Transformation: Delivering value through change
Justice: Capital projects Former Minister for Justice and Equality Frances Fitzgerald and former FSI Director General Sheila Willis unveil a model of the new FSI Backweston Campus in 2017.
A number of capital projects in the justice sector are currently in the offing. eolas examines the projects that will change both the physical and digital face of criminal justice in Ireland in the coming years. Forensic Science Ireland Backweston Campus Main building works began at the new Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) laboratory in Backweston, County Kildare in April 2020. The new laboratory will include approximately 9,550 square metres of internal floor space, which will include state of the art facilities such as air-exchange control to enable air-flow control in DNA sensitive areas such as the DNA database. The Backweston Campus will also include an additional building, approximately 485 square metres, in order to provide storage for the items and exhibits that are submitted to FSI for examination. The €65 million building is expected to take in the region of two years to complete.
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FSI, as part of the Department of Justice, provides a scientific service for the justice sector by providing forensic analysis of crime scene samples and by providing expert evidence in court cases. Initial sod-turning on the project took place in May 2018, however the project was delayed indefinitely in 2018 due to a lack of tender bids. Tenders were expected to be awarded in summer 2019, but due to changes in international forensic laboratory standards, the merging of FSI with the Garda Technical Bureau and changes to staff numbers, the tender award was pushed back to the latter half of 2019. FSI has recently said that more staff will be needed to staff the new facility, with a 25 per cent jump in the numbers of cases handled reported in 2019, and a 20 per cent year-on-year increase in
demand for its services in the first quarter of 2020.
Military Road Work has begun on the €80 million construction of the new command and control centre for An Garda Síochána on Military Road in Dublin 8, near Heuston Station. Originally projected to finished for July 2022, delays have seen that date revised to September 2022, which has prompted warning from the Office of Public Works (OPW) that any further delays will have “huge financial implications”. Garda specialist units are currently housed in Harcourt Square, but the OPW’s lease on the building they occupy expires at the end of 2022, requiring the completion of the new facility before then in order to facilitate
