A CAMPAIGN group representing more than 1,000 families, who discovered that their deceased children’s organs were retained without their consent, yesterday hand-delivered their 11th letter seeking a meeting with Health Minister Mary Harney.

IT is obscene the head of Dunne Inquiry into Organ Retention and her senior legal team were each paid €1,902 a day for a job that they never completed, campaign group Parents for Justice (PFJ) said yesterday.

ALARM bells about the ability of the Dunne Inquiry into Organ Retention to complete its work would have rung much sooner if it was obliged to produce interim progress reports, according to Comptroller and Auditor General.

A top children’s hospital was sending organs to the UK without the permission of parents for several decades, it was revealed today.

ANYONE attending the Parents for Justice, Truth & Reconciliation Forum yesterday couldn’t help but feel overwhelming admiration for the one man who took to the podium to discuss the unauthorised retention of his son’s organs.

Harrowing stories will be told today by parents whose children’s organs were controversially retained by hospitals.

Parents whose deceased children’s organs were retained by hospitals today said they were unhappy after viewing an unpublished report of a Government inquiry into the scandal.

FIONNUALA O’Reilly, one of four mothers who founded Parents for Justice, a support group for families who discovered that their deceased children’s organs had been retained without their knowledge, died yesterday.

THE parents of a dead child, whose tissue samples were retained in a hospital for 29 years and her brain incinerated without their consent, criticised the health authorities yesterday for not answering their questions about her death.

The group Parents for Justice has said that the Madden Report says Dept of Health ministers have been aware of organ retention in hospitals for 24 years.

THE Madden Report into organ retention, which will be published today, is expected to put particular emphasis on poor communications between doctors and parents.

THE Government will receive the long-awaited report of the inquiry into organ retention by Irish hospitals on Wednesday.

PARENTS for Justice is urging its members to boycott the State’s latest inquiry into the retention and use of dead children’s organs.

Evelyn Ring

The Government today appointed a medical lawyer to hold a limited public inquiry into the illegal retention of children’s organs by hospitals.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney is due to meet the Parents for Justice group today to discuss the stalled investigation into the retention of children's organs by Irish hospitals.

LOBBY group Parents for Justice last night criticised the Government’s delay in making public the findings of the Dunne Inquiry into the babies’ organs retention scandal.

TANAISTE Mary Harney is to bring proposals to Cabinet shortly which will allow the organ retention scandal inquiry to be completed by an expert, her spokesman said yesterday.

PARENTS are furious the Dunne Inquiry into the organ retention controversy, which has already cost the taxpayer €20 million, is being wound up without a conclusive report.

THE State probe into the organ retention controversy has turned into a “monumental mess” that could politically damage the Government, a campaign group warned yesterday.

MINISTER for Health Mary Harney has yet to be told when the first report by the State’s five-year inquiry into the organ retention scandal will be on her desk.

FAMILIES of children whose organs were retained by hospitals without consent have said they are disheartened by a move to withdraw a compensation offer from parents who suffered a similar ordeal in Britain.

A HOSPITAL which yesterday admitted retaining the foetuses of 11 women denied any tests were carried out on the babies’ remains.

A CAMPAIGN group for families whose loved ones had organs retained without their knowledge is appalled that a major acute hospital kept a dead man’s brain for almost two years without informing his next-of-kin.

Health Minister Micheál Martin insisted today that the controversial investigation into an organ retention scandal must continue.

MORE than 60 calls a day were logged by a national helpline set up to deal with concerns about the organ retention controversy in its first week of operation.

A group representing the parents of children whose organs were retained without consent by Irish hospitals has criticised the establishment of a helpline for those affected by the scandal.

PARENTS seeking details of post-mortem procedures carried out on their children have been refused access to records despite making requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

IT is impossible for those of us not affected by the almost Burke and Hare-type deception carried out by so many hospitals, in collusion with pharmaceutical companies, to understand the anguish of those parents.

It has been claimed that more pharmaceutical companies and more hospitals were involved in the trade of dead children’s organs than first thought.

THE drugs company that made medication from brain tissue taken from dead infants without their parents’ knowledge confirmed last night it had paid hospitals for supplying the body parts.

The Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, has been urged to scrap the Dunne Inquiry, established to investigate the retention of organs by hospitals.

The Parents for Justice group, which represents the parents of children whose organs were retained by hospitals without permission, is to bring three High Court test cases in the New Year.

It has emerged today that the pituitary glands of children who died at two Dublin hospitals for adults in the 1980's were removed and provided to a pharmaceutical company for research.

FAMILIES devastated by the organ retention scandal face further heartache as they wait to be told that their deceased children’s body parts were supplied to a pharmaceutical company for drug production.

THE Dunne Inquiry into organ retention by hospitals began hearings in March 2001, two years after the issue became a heated public controversy.

A MOTHER whose child’s organs were retained by a hospital without her consent has been given High Court leave to sue the State over its handling of the scandal.

A STATE inquiry into how dead people’s organs were retained by hospitals without consent is likely to drag on for years, it was claimed yesterday.

IRELAND is lagging years behind Britain in ensuring that consent is obtained before body parts are kept by hospitals, a support group for parents at the centre of the Irish organ retention scandal claimed yesterday.

MORE than 700 families affected by the organ retention scandal are to sue Health Minister Micheál Martin for stress and trauma.

THOUSANDS of families believe that organs have been removed from their dead relatives without their consent, according to Parents for Justice.

The Parents for Justice group, which withdrew from the Dunne Inquiry which was set up to examine the retention of organs during post mortem examinations, yesterday reiterated its call that the inquiry be established on a statutory basis.

A STATUTORY inquiry has been demanded into revelations that hundreds of brains from deceased adults were removed for research purposes without consent.