Today the chairwoman of the Post Mortem Inquiry into the retention, storage and disposal of organs, Ms Anne Dunne SC, is due to issue the final draft of procedures she intends to follow. It will prove to be a complex process and, for many parents, a traumatic one.
Emotive denunciation of doctors "harvesting" organs, it can be argued, belies the truth of 30 years of life-saving procedures in Irish hospitals. Equally, much has changed in medical knowledge of life-threatening paediatric illness. We live in a time when accountability and transparency are demanded by the public as never before.
In 1970, the start of the period to be addressed by the Dunne inquiry, 90 per cent of Irish children with tricuspid atresia, a heart defect, died before their first birthday. For those born in 2000, more than 95 per cent will live beyond the yardstick of the next 10 years.
The medical profession is adamant that without the knowledge gleaned from 30 years of autopsies, the retention and study of infant hearts and other organs, understanding of the illness would not have been realised and many people walking around today would simply not be alive. The absence of an autopsy, it is claimed, is akin to refusing to examine the wreckage of a plane crash.
In the past, autopsies led to improved clinical methods, continuing research, experience gained and information shared. And people now live where, three decades ago, they died.
But much else has changed. In 1970, standards were very different. Parents were quite prepared to accept "doctor knows best". Doctors, with their legendary "paternalism", thought better of giving grieving parents the nuts and bolts of what an autopsy involved.
Parents were told the child would be handled with respect, that no new incisions would be made and that the autopsy could lead to knowledge which would save the lives of others. For grieving parents the prospect of others being saved was some consolation.
But in 1999 a British surgeon, Prof Robert Anderson, giving evidence to an inquiry in Bristol, commented that a collection of hearts was housed in the Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool.
The story was quickly picked up by the media and presented as a scandal. Similar questions were asked here and the inquiry initially envisaged by parents was an inquiry into paediatric organ retention. But it was widened to include all organ retention when it emerged that retention was standard practice in the State's hospitals.
The emotive aspect of infant organ retention was the driving force behind the campaign group Parents for Justice. When it became known that pituitary glands from dead infants were given to drug companies, these parents felt their loss turn to hurt, and their hurt turn to anger. Hurt, which had its genesis in the disease and death of a child, was then turned on doctors.
Ms Fionnuala O'Reilly, of Parents for Justice, says it cannot be ignored that pituitary glands were sold to drug companies. While she accepts that no doctors benefited personally, she feels the issue warrants the attention of an inquiry. She says some parents, who may have given consent willingly, were not asked. "The deception," she says, "is at the root of the hurt."
Some parents have said that the hospitals clinically "harvested" the organs of their children during their [the parents'] worst times. The slogan "Doctors in Crumlin don't care about children, they only care about organs", which was aired on radio, summed up their attitude.
But for Dr Brian Denham, consultant paediatric cardiologist at the hospital for the past three decades, the slogan is a travesty.
Organ retention was no secret, according to Dr Denham. It was known to all hospital staff, pathologists, family doctors and morticians. "Pituitary glands were provided because there was no other source of the human growth hormone at that time. They weren't provided for the doctor's benefit, they were provided for the benefit of patients," he says.
Criticism of absence of records of how the organs were ultimately disposed of is unfair, in his opinion. "You did not keep those records 30 years ago. To keep record of each organ would have required a museum of pathology, the aid of a university department and the funding which was simply not there."
Dr Denham says his concern is that the inquiry may result in it being virtually impossible to conduct an autopsy.
Already, the Faculty of Pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons has issued revised guidelines on seeking consent for an autopsy. Dr Michael Madden, dean of the faculty, has said full details of what the autopsy entails should be made explicit. This is even if in the immediate hours after a child's death those details are enough to cause the parents to refuse.
The problem is complex and emotive. But there is one party which has yet to significantly join the debate. Many children who would have been doomed to die within the first months of life are now living happy and healthy lives.
The success of these lives is directly attributable to the knowledge gleaned from the organs of those who were not so fortunate.