The East Coast Area Health Board has appointed a special bereavement counsellor to liaise with families following fatal road accidents.
Wicklow coroner Mr Cathal Louth told an inquest in the town yesterday this procedure was not in place two years ago when five people died as a result of a school bus crash on the N11, north of Arklow.
The accident happened on September 14th, 1998, when a school minibus was in collision with a lorry at Barndarrig. The minibus was on its way to St Catherine's school for children with special needs in Newcastle.
Garda John Herity told the inquest that when he arrived on the scene at 8.35 a.m. a passing doctor had already pronounced five people dead.
They were the bus driver, Jackie Kavanagh (48), pupils Kevin O'Leary (10) and Robert Cullen (11) and sisters Fionnuala Byrne (22) and Sharon Sheehan (23) who were care workers at the school.
Garda Herity said the driver of the lorry, Victor Teggart from Armagh, was later charged with dangerous driving, causing death. But, last March, in the Dublin Circuit Court, the charges were dismissed.
The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure as a result of injuries sustained in a road traffic accident.
Solicitor Donal King told the coroner the families were looking for information about the retention of organs of the dead, specifically, the brains of the four young people in the crash.
The families learned just last summer the children had been buried without these organs and had suffered severe distress. Mr Louth said it was necessary in nearly all cases to retain tissue from the post-mortem and, on some occasions, to retain organs for examination. Representatives of the families said they were unhappy with the meagre information they had received. They said they would continue to seek further details of the post-mortems, of the location of the organs and how they were disposed of.