Storage of organs ‘remains unregulated’

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.

Legislation, prompted by the scandal at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, has just been published in Britain. The retrieval and the storage of human organs remains unregulated in Ireland.

Under the Human Tissue Bill, doctors in Britain who fail to get consent from patients or families for the retention of organs face a jail term of up to three years. The bill provides for the setting up of a Human Tissue Authority that will license doctors, researchers and institutions that use tissue and organs for transplant and research. Under the bill no one, except with the coroner’s authority or for criminal investigation, will be allowed to retain organs or tissue without the patient’s or relative’s consent.

Parents for Justice (PFJ) have given a cautious welcome to the proposed legislation and will be following its progress in Britain.

PFJ spokesperson Fionnuala O’Reilly said no progress could be made in drawing up similar human tissue legislation in Ireland until the current State inquiry into the organ retention scandal was completed.

In October 2002 PFJ walked away from the Dunne Inquiry, after Health Minister Micheál Martin refused to put it on a statutory footing.

Mr Martin told PFJ he wanted the inquiry to complete its investigation of the role played by paediatric hospitals before deciding on how the next stage of the inquiry should proceed.

Inquiry chairperson Anne Dunne SC had told Mr Martin she expected to complete her report on paediatric hospitals by the end of this year.

Ms Dunne is expected to investigate maternity hospitals and then other hospitals in the next stage of her investigation.