An indication has been given of the scale of the DNA screening excercise being planned by police officers trying to solve the mystery of a new-born baby boy, found dead in Douglas in the late 1980s.

Nineteen years to the day after the child's body was discovered in a communal bathroom at the former Nurses' Home, officers are renewing their appeal to the mother to make herself known.

But they are also planning to request DNA samples, by way of mouth swabs, from selected individuals, the number of whom, they say, 'certainly wouldn't run into thousands'.

D.I. Phil Shimmin (pictured) says there is no suggestion of screening every woman in the Island who was of child bearing age in 1989 (audio file attached):

You can email any information relating to the investigation to ancestral.dha@gov.im