Parents whose children's organs were retained by hospitals without their knowledge are today holding a public meeting in the wake of the leaking of the Dunne report yesterday.
The Parents for Justice group is hosting a second truth and reconciliation forum in Cork today, with five mothers and a father speaking out against organ-retention practices in Ireland.
The Dunne inquiry into the retention of children's organs by hospitals found that doctors had been arrogant and insensitive. However, there was no evidence of malice or ulterior motives as doctors believed such postmortem practices were the norm internationally.
Senior counsel Anne Dunne, who carried out the report.
Senior counsel Anne Dunne said parents and next of kin had not been informed about the removal, retention, storage and disposal of organs because of a paternalistic attitude adopted by clinicians. She described the practice of seeking to isolate parents and next of kin from their babies after death as unacceptable.
The Dunne inquiry report proposed that legislation should be enacted to deal with the question of ownership of a dead body that would set out the rights and obligations of parents and next of kin. It also recommended that parents should be able to sue hospitals and individual doctors where breaches of the statutory provisions occurred.
In addition, it proposed that an independent board comprising medical, lay, religious and ethnic members should be established to draw up guidelines to give effect to the statute.
The inquiry was closed down by Minister for Health Mary Harney in March 2005 after it missed a number of deadlines. Its report has not been made public. Ms Harney said it was the advice of the Attorney General that the report could not be published.
Parents for Justice received an edited version of the executive summary of the Dunne report under the Freedom of Information Act in recent days.
The Labour Party's health spokeswoman, Liz McManus, called on the Government to introduce legislation to give full effect to the recommendations contained in the report and to publish it in full.
Parents for Justice says its forums are an attempt to provide a solution for the failures of the Government to properly investigate the issue.
"The stories that will be told will be quite harrowing, however, we believe they must be told," said Charlotte Yeates, founder member of the group.
"Tragically, the trauma that many of our members have experienced has been swept under the carpet by virtue of the private nature of inquiries established, the incapacity of such inquiries to properly investigate and the lack of an open and transparent reporting mechanism arising from any process that existed.
"This Government has managed to silence people affected by the organ retention practice by its failure to deliver an all-encompassing and effective inquiry mechanism," Ms Yeates added.
The organisation was founded in December 1999 by four mothers who discovered that their deceased children's organs had been removed, retained and in some cases disposed of, following postmortem in a leading Dublin hospital, without their knowledge or consent.