Cutbacks have forced the State Pathologist to drive up to four hours at a time to attend murder scenes, it emerged yesterday.
Dr Marie Cassidy revealed she no longer had access to a chauffeur-driven Garda car when called out to murders. She said it was a burden to have to face four-hour journeys before conducting forensic examinations.
"Over the last couple of years the guards have been marvellous and they have provided transport if I have to go down the country," she said. "But unfortunately cutbacks means that I am back on the bus again, I'm afraid. It's a burden, it really is."
Dr Cassidy, who took over as State Pathologist from Prof John Harbison almost two years ago, said the stress of travelling hundreds of miles and battling through traffic would put extra pressure on her work.
She said there was always a worry among forensic scientists that mistakes would be made due to tiredness.
"When people call you maybe at nine o'clock at night you think, by the time I get down there it's one or two in the morning, what if you make a mistake because I'm not on the ball? You are always worried, particularly if based on your evidence someone is being charged with a crime, what if you don't get it right," she said on RTÉ Radio 1's Marian Finucane Show.
Dr Cassidy, who has examined mass graves in war-stricken countries such as Bosnia for the UN War Crimes Tribunal, said there was always the pressure that a pathologist's opinion on the cause of death would be at odds with another expert view.
"You give your decision and base your opinion on the facts of the case and your own expertise and the wealth of experience you have," Dr Cassidy said, "but somebody else may have a very different interpretation of the injuries," she said.