Parents hit out at €7.7m paid to organ inquiry team

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.

Legal fees totalling €7.7 million — paid by the State to the inquiry chair, Anne Dunne and her two senior legal experts — were revealed during an examination by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (C&AG) report on the post-mortem inquiry.

PFJ, which represents more than 1,000 families who had the organs of their loved ones retained without their knowledge or consent, said the Government should have pulled the plug on the €20m-plus inquiry as soon as it became apparent it was a complete waste of taxpayer’s money.