Parents for Justice co-founder O’Reilly dies

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.

Ms O’Reilly, 42, from Pollerton, Co Carlow, who was married with three children aged between seven and 21, will be buried in the same grave as her son, Michael, who was just five-months-old when he died during exploratory surgery in December 1995.

Four years after her son’s death, Ms O’Reilly learned that his heart and lungs had been retained following a post-mortem in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin. That same year Ms O’Reilly agreed to head Parents for Justice, a position she held until her death.