The Parents For Justice group, which campaigns on behalf of people whose deceased children's organs were retained by hospitals without their consent, is considering legal action against the hospitals and individual doctors, writes Kitty Holland.
The group's spokeswoman, Ms Fionnuala O'Reilly, was speaking in response to reports that Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin had sought legal indemnity from all claims from parents in advance of its participation in the Organ Retention Inquiry.
The chief executive of Our Lady's Hospital, Mr Paul Kavanagh, confirmed that the hospital had sought indemnity "as a prudent matter of course".
Mr Kavanagh said: "We were advised to do so by our legal people. The Minister said he had no authority to give legal indemnity and we accepted that.
" In no way though were we making our participation in the inquiry conditional on getting indemnity. I must stress that."
Ms O'Reilly however questioned why the hospital had been advised to seek indemnity at all "if the post-mortem practices were as routine as they told us".
Parents For Justice withdrew from the Dunne inquiry into organ retention last month, citing "the absence of specific statutory proposals" and long delays in getting the inquiry up and running.
Since withdrawing the group has been "left with three options", Ms O'Reilly said.
These were to mount a public campaign with a view to having a statutory inquiry established; to issue legal writs en masse against nominated people in hospitals, the Minister for Health and the relevant health boards; or to press for criminal proceedings against individual clinicians in the hospitals.
The group has employed a public relations firm to take charge of its publicity campaign.
"Parents for Justice has never discussed the issue of litigation with the Minister for Health but we cannot rule out the possibility of individual writs," said Ms O'Reilly. However, there "were clear breaches of legislation".
In many instances hospitals had failed to notify coroners of children's deaths. In other instances, she said, parents were told their consent was not needed for a post-mortem on their dead child as the coroner had ordered one, when in fact the coroner had not been notified of the death. In some cases children's deaths have never been registered by the hospitals.
"It's absolutely shocking. It is clear that there have certainly been breaches of the law", though it remained unclear whether the alleged breaches were perpetrated by doctors on their own initiative or whether they were effectively hospital policy.
"We are in consultation with our legal advisers on the issue of criminal proceedings," she said.
She also said the group may press the Attorney General for inquests into the individual cases.
Questioning the good faith of all the relevant hospitals' participation in the Dunne inquiry, she said Our Lady's Hospital and others had been "ducking and diving".
"It is outrageous to think that this hospital would, for 18 months, string these distraught parents along into co-operating with an inquiry which we believe is going nowhere."
Mr Kavanagh, acknowledging that the hospital was taking a long time to ready itself for the inquiry, said a "very considerable part of hospital effort" had been directed at "trying to respond to individual requests for information" - time which was "necessary and appropriate". He said there was no "concealment".