Organ retention inquiry to drag on

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.

The Dunne inquiry into the organ retention scandal missed its Christmas deadline for completing its examination of children's hospitals.

The inquiry, which has already cost the taxpayer over €7 million, is still preparing its report on the children’s hospitals and has not told the Department of Health when it will finish.

The inquiry, which is non-statutory and conducts its hearings in private, began in March, 2001.

Chairwoman Anne Dunne SC first estimated the entire inquiry, would take six months to complete, but that estimation was revised to 18 months and is now open-ended.

Spokesperson for Parents for Justice (PFJ), Fionnuala O'Reilly, said yesterday it must be remembered that the children's hospitals only formed one element of the inquiry's investigation.

Maternity hospitals were due to be examined next, followed by the general hospitals because the retention of adult organs was another part of the inquiry's work.

In October, 2002, Parents for Justice, which represents 800 families affected by the scandal, withdrew from the inquiry, claiming it was ineffective because it was not on a statutory footing and was being conducted in private. The group believes any report produced by the inquiry will be irrelevant, because it will only reflect the experience of a very small number of families.

Around 100 families whose deceased children's organs were retained by hospitals without their consent are suing the minister for stress and trauma and hundreds more are expected to serve him with similar writs.

Ms O'Reilly warned that the minister's motivation in preserving what she described as “the private and toothless inquiry” would become apparent in the court proceedings.

Since the beginning of 2003 the inquiry has been concentrating on post-mortem policy, practice and procedure at the main paediatric hospitals: Tallaght Hospital (including Harcourt St Children's Hospital), Temple Street and Our Lady's Hospital, Crumlin.

Health Minister Micheál Martin says the inquiry has heard 56 hospital and non-hospital witnesses at oral hearings and has accumulated almost 3,500 pages of transcripts of oral evidence.

The minister also told Cork Fine Gael TD David Stanton in a recent Dáil reply, that the inquiry had cost the State €7.237 million by the end of last October. Mr Martin said Ms Dunne had informed him that the inquiry had received "considerable co-operation" from the hospitals it was dealing with and, so far, the inquiry's non-statutory nature had not hampered its substantive work.

“The chairman is mindful of the need to have her report completed as soon as is reasonably practicable following the completion of the oral evidence,” he said.

Because of a confidentiality clause, it is not known how many parents are still co-operating with the inquiry.