Parents For Justice, the organisation representing families who discovered that organs of their deceased children had been retained without their consent, said it was not discouraged by the judgment. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
Its spokeswoman, Ms Fionnuala O'Reilly, said the Devlins' case was fought on "very restrictive issues", and when Parents for Justice takes a number of similar cases they will be run on "wider" grounds.
While the Devlins are members of Parents for Justice they fought their case independently of the organisation.
"Parents for Justice are in the process of preparing a number of test cases, and at least one of them has already been served on the hospital, the Minister and the Attorney General. We hope our cases will be heard in the High Court from next spring onwards," Ms O'Reilly said.
It would be contended during these cases that organs were taken without consent and sold to pharmaceutical companies, exported out of the country and transferred to medical schools. "We will contend that consent for autopsy does not imply consent for organ retention," she said.
The master of the National Maternity Hospital, Dr Declan Keane, said he was pleased with the outcome. Although the NMH had not obtained written consent for post-mortems in the 1980s, it had obtained verbal consent. "We knew we would always have obtained consent and so on that basis we fought the case and thankfully we were vindicated," he said.
But he said the issue of organ retention still had to be dealt with by the Dunne Inquiry. The inquiry has been sitting in private since 2001, has already cost more than €15 million and has only produced an interim report. Its next report, which will deal with organ retention practices in paediatric hospitals, is not due until the autumn, and the inquiry will then look at practices in the maternity hospital.
Parents for Justice withdrew from the inquiry and began to pursue the legal route because it believed the inquiry was not getting full co-operation from hospitals.