Eithne Donnellan reports on the inquiry which has sat in private since 2001, and cost over €15 million
The Government decided in April 2000 to establish an inquiry into the retention without consent of children's organs by Irish hospitals over a period going back to the 1970s.
The controversy had come to light a year earlier when a Dublin woman discovered that her child's heart and lungs were removed and retained without consent during a post-mortem examination at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin.
Several other families then began to ask questions about what happened during post-mortems on their relatives and by late 1999 Parents for Justice, a support organisation for those affected, had been established.
It campaigned for a statutory inquiry into the affair. What it got, however, when the inquiry was finally up and running in 2001 was a non-statutory one, which means it depends on the voluntary co-operation of all parties.
Despite their unhappiness with this arrangement Parents for Justice co-operated with the inquiry until late 2002, when the chairwoman, Ms Anne Dunne SC, published her first progress report.
It confirmed some of their worst fears. Ms Dunne's report said she was concerned at the attitude of a number of hospitals which had failed to co-operate with the investigation up to that point. She said there had also been a significant delay in responses to the inquiry from certain other hospitals. None of the hospitals were named.
"At this stage the inquiry does not think it appropriate to name any hospital," she wrote.
The matter was brought to the attention of the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, as Ms Dunne is obliged to do under the terms of reference of the inquiry.
Mr Martin indicated in 2000 that the inquiry would take about six months. However, it did not invite submissions from the public until early 2001 when Ms Dunne said she expected to report back in about 18 months.
In her progress report of December 2002 she noted that while 150,000 pages of documents had already been considered, progress was slow given the volume of work involved.
"It is the opinion of the inquiry that the proper conduct of its work . . . requires that it will be some considerable time before it is possible to present its \ report to the Minister for Health and Children," Ms Dunne wrote.
Because the inquiry is sitting in private and has produced no other report, little is known about the level of co-operation it has been getting since 2002 from all 201 hospitals in the State. Even correspondence between the inquiry and the Department of Health, which would have given an indication of that co-operation, is no longer being released following changes to the Freedom of Information Act.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said yesterday that Ms Dunne had given no indication in recent months that hospitals were failing to co-operate. A call to the Dunne inquiry yesterday to discuss its progress was not returned.
However, replies to Dáil questions in June throw some light on the stage the inquiry is at.
Mr Martin said that following consultations with Ms Dunne in late 2002, it was agreed the inquiry would give priority to completing its work on post-mortem issues in paediatric hospitals with a view to furnishing a report by the end of 2003. This was to be followed by a second report on post-mortem issues in maternity hospitals and a third on other hospitals.
Mr Martin indicated that the inquiry, in recent correspondence, told him it had not been possible to complete the report on paediatric hospitals within the timeframe "as matters have taken longer to conclude than previously anticipated".
He said: "The chairman has informed me that, with some exceptions, the information gathering in relation to paediatric hospitals is complete . . . the inquiry must now deal with the resolution of matters in dispute and the conclusion of the report."
The first comprehensive report is, therefore, not expected until late this year at the earliest, and the inquiry, which will then have two other reports to produce, looks set to drag on indefinitely.
Undoubtedly there is much information to be sifted through and the inquiry met many delays arising from disagreements over terms of reference and the non-co-operation of some hospitals.
Had Dunne been a statutory inquiry it is likely that it would have been a speedier affair. At least two statutory inquiries, including the Finlay and Lindsay tribunals, completed their work in a shorter time. So too did an independent inquiry into organ retention by hospitals in the UK.
Parents for Justice have now called on Ms Dunne to make a statement on her investigations to date.