The High Court has upheld a decision of Ombudsman and Information Commissioner Emily O'Reilly directing the National Maternity Hospital to hand over to parents submissions it made to the inquiry into the retention of organs of dead children.
As a result, the Parents for Justice Group is to get access to the submissions by Holles Street hospital to the Dunne Inquiry Into Organ Retention.
Mr Justice John Quirke dismissed the hospital's appeal against the decision of Ms O'Reilly. He ruled that she had afforded fair procedures to the hospital and opportunities to make submissions, when she was conducting her review of the hospital's decision not to release the material in question.
After the judgment, a spokeswoman for Parents for Justice said they were delighted with the outcome. Charlotte Yates said Holles Street was the only hospital that had gone to court on the matter after the group had submitted requests to see records and documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI).
The hospital claimed its submissions were made on a confidential basis to the private inquiry in 2000 following revelations hospitals had retained organs of deceased patients without consent for postmortems.
It claimed the commissioner had erred in law in failing to refuse access to those submissions.
The Government requested the inquiry in March 2005 to produce a report. Dr Deirdre Madden was appointed to the inquiry in May 2005 and completed her report that December.