 St. Lucia's forensic laboratory has taken a significant step in its journey to accreditation, a journey which began in 2018. The forensic lab has completed the first phase of an ISO17025 2017 audit. The audit was conducted by the America Association for Laboratory Accreditation A2LA, Headquartered in Maryland, USA. Three assessors were on island for the process, Fernanda Henrys, the Director of Forensic Science Services. Tracy Ray, who was our leader assessor, and she looked at our drug chemistry section. Pamela Jarman, who is a biologist by profession, and she was assessing our biology units to include body fluid identification, and she also got to see our intended DNA operations. And John, John Macula, John is a firearms expert, and so John was here to look at our procedure that we implemented to restore serial numbers. It's called serial number restoration. So we want to include all of those services, all of those testing activities on our scope for accreditation. 16 findings have been presented by the assessors in a color coded format which defines what remedial actions are necessary. Green findings means that they're easy fixes. Yellow findings have some sort of implication for our quality management system, and red findings have a financial implication. We classified only two red findings, which again, they were not, you know, not onerous. We're excited to remediate, to put our corrective action into place so that we can change, review our documents as required to submit our responses to those findings. Once we submit our responses, then the accreditation council will vote on for or against our accreditation. The director of forensic science services says this just completed assessment is a testament to the ability of the staff. Ms. Henry Hale is the dedication and the commitment of the scientists, even when COVID-19 threatened to derail the process. Our quality manager, Joy Quinlan, started putting documents together, cognizance of the requirements of the standard. We started drafting documents and getting the units to start looking through their procedures to ensure that all of the components required for compliance were in there. Then COVID hit, and of course, you know, it threw all of us into a whirlwind. We went over to the Ezra Long Laboratory to train them on PCR testing, since it was a technology that we already did at the lab, having conducted DNA analysis here. And it was after that our experience is there that we really decided to go full throttling to our quality management system. The forensic lab is working on completing validation for DNA analysis. The next step is the submission of documents for off-site review, given that the assessors have already evaluated the operations of the lab. Once the assessor has reviewed the documents, the forensic lab will be able to add DNA analysis to the scope of accreditation. Forensic scientist Tracy Ray is the lead assessor. Forensic laboratories, it's really important to have that accreditation, because you want that standard of excellence. You want to show that you are improving your system, that you're doing everything possible to provide the correct results to your customers, to law enforcement, to the court systems. So a lot of laboratories, they don't go and get accredited right away, because they got to make sure that all of the everything works how it should, and then they work through that process of getting accredited. The team of assessors is due back on Ireland in one year for a surveillance visit to ensure that all remedial works identified in the findings have been undertaken. From the Government Information Service, Lisa Joseph reporting.