Indemnity bid by hospital in scandal

MANAGEMENT of the Dublin hospital at the centre of an organ retention scandal has been accused of underhand dealings after it emerged that blanket indemnity had been sought for staff prior to an inquiry.

Parents for Justice, the support group representing more than 2000 families affected by the scandal, has accused Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin of failing to come clean about the hospital’s cooperation with the investigating inquiry.

“Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, has once again ducked and dived and got away from telling the whole truth,” PFJ spokeswoman Fionnuala O’Reilly said.

Ms O’Reilly was responding to comments made by the hospital’s chief executive, Paul Kavanagh, on RTE radio yesterday morning, after revelations that the hospital had written to the Minister for Health asking for blanket indemnity from all claims from parents, before participating in the Organ Retention Inquiry.

“We question why such blanket indemnity was now being sought if the post-mortem practices were as routine as they told us, and why many families were told all along that this was standard and universally applied practice,” Ms O’Reilly said, calling for a copy of the hospital’s letter to the minister to be released.

But Mr Kavanagh said he saw no reason why the letter could not be released.

“That letter was not meant in any way to condition our participation in the inquiry,” he said, adding that all post-mortems carried out at the hospital had been done in the standard manner.

The hospital is estimated to have carried out 3,200 post-mortems on children during the period covered by the inquiry, and according to Mr Kavanagh, had received inquiries from parents concerning some 600 of those.

Asked if the hospital would favour a statutory inquiry, he said his role was limited to fulfilling the hospital’s requirement under the already-established form of private inquiry.

But the PFJ said such a response was not satisfactory and called for Mr Kavanagh to be more specific. “We were horrified to hear the hospital chief’s repeated failure to clearly state if the hospital would now be in favour of a statutory inquiry. This question needs to be asked now,” Ms O’Reilly said.

The Dunne Inquiry was set up after it emerged in 1999 that the organs of a child were taken in 1985 during a post-mortem at Our Lady’s in Crumlin, which the family said was without their consent.

But after four years and at a cost of €4 million, the inquiry, which is being held in private, has yet to make public findings.

Opposition parties have tabled a motion in the Dáil seeking a full Tribunal of Inquiry and last month, the 2000 PFJ members withdrew from the Dunne Inquiry, unhappy with its progress.

PFJ said it had now written to hospital board chairman Cardinal Desmond Connell, calling on him to establish exactly what went on at the hospital.