Parents of children whose organs were retained by hospitals without their consent say they will cease co-operating with the Dunne inquiry unless it is put on a statutory basis within a week.
Parents for Justice, the group representing affected families, said it had run out of patience with the inquiry, which has cost €4 million to date and has yet to produce its report more than two years since an initial deadline lapsed.
Questioning the inquiry's efficiency, Ms Fionnuala O'Reilly, the group's chairwoman, said: "We started asking questions in December 1999 and we are none the wiser."
Of particular concern, she said, was the fact that the group had been advised by its lawyers that the report could not be discussed by the Oireachtas Committee on Health, as planned, due to last April's Supreme Court ruling on the Abbeylara inquiry.
The court found the Oireachtas had no explicit, implicit or inherent power to conduct an inquiry where that inquiry was capable of leading to adverse findings of fact against citizens, which would impugn their good names.
Ms O'Reilly noted: "We have co-operated in a state of uncertainty and a state of limbo for six months now. We have reached a point where we can no longer continue to do so."
She said the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, had given parents both oral and written commitments to the effect that the inquiry would have a statutory phase following publication of the report.
The report was due to have been published within six months of the appointment of Ms Anne Dunne SC as chairwoman of the inquiry in March 2000. However, the deadline was subsequently extended to September 2002.
A spokeswoman for the Minister said he had received an "interim progress report" last Thursday evening on which he was taking legal advice from the Attorney General.
As to whether he would put the inquiry on a statutory footing, she said the Minister was committed to establishing the facts, and "only if the non-statutory process did not work" would he look at other options. "He feels he has not got to the stage where one can say that the non-statutory process is not working because the inquiry is continuing in its work," she said, adding that the Minister had offered to meet Parents for Justice and would make a copy of the progress report available to it.
But Ms O'Reilly said the group felt "betrayed" by the Minister, to whom it had given an ultimatum of next Wednesday for the inquiry to be put on a statutory footing.
If the deadline was not met, she said, the group, which represented 708 families, would withdraw all co-operation with the inquiry and consider taking legal action against the Minister and the State. "We believe we've been far too nice for too long," she said.
She criticised the inquiry for failing to set a deadline for the receipt of responses from hospitals, or to explain at what stage they would be deemed to have not co-operated. "That's a source of deep concern to the group, and it paints a scenario where this inquiry could stretch on for years and years and years."
