THE GOVERNMENT is manipulating families and attempting to prevent the full horror of the organ-retention scandal emerging, the Parents for Justice action group has claimed.
The group, which represents parents of children whose organs were retained without consent in Irish hospitals from the 1970s up to the year 2000, now wants the second phase of an inquiry into their retention, which was promised but never took place, to commence.
The first phase of the organs inquiry, which looked at organ retention in children's hospitals, began in 2000 and was headed by Anne Dunne SC. That inquiry was wound up by the Government without having its second phase, dealing with organ-retention practices in adult hospitals, completed. The inquiry was closed in March 2005. At that stage the inquiry had cost about €13 million - six times the original estimate.
Parents for Justice's calls for the second phase of the inquiry to begin now come on foot of the group's acquisition of documentation under the Freedom of Information Act which it claims indicates that payments were received by individuals for human pituitary glands. It was already known hospitals received payment for harvesting these glands from pharmaceutical companies which used them in the manufacture of growth hormone. But the hospitals claimed they received only "minor compensation" for doing so.
Speaking at a press conference in Dublin yesterday, Charlotte Yeats of Parents for Justice said the Government had tried to make life difficult for the group in accessing information and it had to rely on Freedom of Information requests to make any progress as hospitals were so reluctant to supply the organisation with information. She said families who had lodged cases in court as their only means of receiving answers had received letters from the State Claims Agency encouraging them to withdraw their cases or face huge legal bills.
Ms Yeats said: "This indicates that the Government is determined to put every obstacle in our way but obstacle courses are no problem for us at this stage and will not stop us."
She said the documentation her group has indicates the practice of payment to individuals was common to all hospitals where the collection of human pituitary glands was carried out. "We have come across lists of cheque payments in more than one hospital," she said. "We are not asking for an expensive tribunal, but simply that the second phase of the post-mortem inquiry be initiated," she said.
She added that the work in phase one of the inquiry as well as Parents for Justice's own work should mean the second phase would be "expeditious and cost-effective".
Her group has also claimed that with post-mortems being carried out in undertakers in Ireland it is impossible to say how far reaching the problem might be. It added that even though in the US recently an 18-year jail sentence was handed down to a person for selling body parts, in Ireland it was impossible to get even basic information.
After the Dunne inquiry was wound up in 2005, UCC law lecturer Dr Deirdre Madden was asked to complete a report based on the documentation gathered by the inquiry at that stage. Her report was published in January 2006.