Martin rejects demands over organ inquiry

Health Minister Micheál Martin insisted today that the controversial investigation into an organ retention scandal must continue.

He categorically rejected calls to transfer the Dunne Inquiry on to a statutory footing, claiming it would only delay the outcome.

“If you put it on a statutory basis it would set the whole thing back a number of years,” he said.

“It would give a whole new dynamic, methodology and format to the inquiry.”

The minister claimed the inquiry, which has been sitting in private since 2001, had made great progress and uncovered some important revelations in recent weeks.

He said a lot of hospitals had made submissions regarding the supply of pituitary glands from deceased children and adults to pharmaceutical companies.

Mr Martin also said that the scale on which the organs were supplied to develop a human growth hormone had surprised everyone, including himself.

“It has emerged to have been on a wider scale than anyone would have known,” he said.

“We need to get a complete picture of what happened in Irish hospitals and why organs were stored, and for that we must await the report’s findings.”

The Dunne Inquiry concerns controversial organ supplies made in the 1970s and 1980s and has already cost more than €15m.

The inquiry’s next interim report, which will deal with organ retention practices in paediatric hospitals, is due in the autumn.

The Parents for Justice campaign group has withdrawn from the inquiry and began to pursue the legal route because it claims the investigation is not getting full co-operation from hospitals.