A woman whose child's organs were retained by a hospital without consent yesterday initiated a further stage in legal proceedings aimed at forcing the Government to establish a full-scale statutory inquiry into the controversy.
Ms Christine McStay, a member of the representative group Parents for Justice, is claiming that the organisation had a legitimate expectation based on assurances provided by the former minister for health, Mr Martin, that the Dunne inquiry established by the Government to look into the controversy would operate in an expeditious and effective manner.
The latest court action comes following revelations by The Irish Times that the Department of Health is to end the Dunne inquiry in six weeks' time and that it has "no expectation" any report will be produced by that deadline.
Yesterday, lawyers for Ms McStay filed a motion in the High Court aimed at challenging moves by the State to have the case disallowed on technical grounds.
A spokeswoman for Parents for Justice, Ms Fionnuala O'Reilly, told The Irish Times last night it was ironic the State was defending the legal action on the grounds that the Dunne inquiry was an effective investigation into the controversy, at the same time as the Tánaiste and Minister for Health was about to close it down "with the perception that it had encountered difficulties".
Yesterday The Irish Times revealed that the Department of Health had told the chairman of the inquiry, senior counsel Ms Anne Dunne, that its remit would end on March 31st.
If no report has been produced by then, the Department is to appoint a new independent expert to write up a report on the controversy, based on material generated by the current inquiry.
Ms O'Reilly said last night that her organisation was seeking an urgent meeting with the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, on the revelations.
She said her organisation wanted to know why the Dunne inquiry had failed to produce a report, who the new expert proposed to write up the report would be and the timescale for this process to be completed?
Ms O'Reilly said that the Parents for Justice organisation had lost patience with the Dunne inquiry several years ago. She said that while the organisation did not want to sound triumphalist, the reservations and concerns it expressed at the time had come to pass. Parents for Justice believed that the only way to proceed was to establish a full statutory inquiry.
To date the State has paid out nearly €20 million on the Dunne inquiry. However, no substantive report has been produced.
The inquiry had agreed with the former minister for health, Mr Martin, last September that a report into post-mortem practices in paediatric hospitals would be completed by Christmas. However this did not happen.
