The controversy surrounding the removal of organs from dead children without parental permission widened yesterday when it emerged that a number of hospitals had removed organs from adults without the consent of their next-of-kin.
A group established to lobby for information about the controversial practice involving babies at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin said it had been inundated with complaints involving adults.
Two people who contacted Parents for Justice - A Voice for the Children Who Cannot Speak said hospitals had confirmed that organs had been removed without their knowledge from the bodies of relatives during post-mortem examinations. The group said it had received almost 2,000 calls since last week.
"We are receiving some horrific stories," a group member, Ms Fionnuala O'Reilly, said. "Some of the information we have received about another Dublin hospital would make the hair stand on your head."
In at least one case a relative is taking legal action against a hospital which removed organs from his child's body during the post-mortem, Ms O'Reilly said.
Our Lady's Hospital has confirmed in the last four weeks that the heart and lungs of her baby son are still at the hospital, five years after his death.
The group will meet the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Cowen, on Thursday. Ms O'Reilly said they would seek to establish the scale of the problem, how long it had been going on, and who was aware of it. They are demanding an independent investigation into the practice.
Responding to questions in the Dail last week, the Minister of State for Health, Dr Tom Moffatt, confirmed that the organs of 98 children were still being kept by Our Lady's.
The hospital said last week that organ or tissue removal was necessary in certain post-mortem examinations to establish the cause of death. That was the universal practice of all pathologists in all hospitals, and did not imply the retention of organs for research.
UCC medical law lecturer Ms Deirdre Madden said pathologists were within the law in taking tissue or organ samples to establish the cause of death, but would leave themselves open to prosecution if they used samples obtained in this way for research or training without the permission of the next-of-kin.
She did not believe the hospitals had acted in bad faith but had merely operated in line with the practice which existed at the time.
Our Lady's Hospital had failed to address the concerns raised by the parents of children whose organs had been removed without their permission, Ms O'Reilly said. Yesterday the Fine Gael health spokesman, Mr Alan Shatter, called on Mr Cowen to hold an inquiry into the use of children's organs following their deaths at Our Lady's Hospital.