Parents for Justice was founded in December 1999 by four mothers, (Fionnuala O 'Reilly, Charlotte Yeates, Breda Butler and the late Margaret McKeever), who discovered that their deceased children's organs had been retained and disposed of, following post-mortem in a leading Dublin Hospital, without their knowledge or consent. Frustrated at their inability to obtain answers to reasonable questions about post-mortem practice, policy and procedure within Irish hospitals, these mothers decided to speak publicly about their experiences.

   Within a three-week period in December 1999,the group had received in excess of 2000 phonecalls from parents and other next-of-kin who expressed similar concern about post-mortem practices within the state. The four founding members
empathised with callers in the grief that they expressed. A sympathetic and reassuring voice at the end of a phone was always available.
By January 2000,a dedicated help-line was established with three of the committee members dealing with day-time calls and all four members took numerous calls each evening. Guidance was offered to those who were in the process of enquiring about whether or not the organs of next-of-kin had been retained or disposed of.

   From the beginning, the committee and members of Parents for Justice were dismayed by the post-mortem practices that appear to have prevailed in this state until very recently. In particular, the group was concerned at the very high rate of organ retention following post-mortem in Irish hospitals. This concern was compounded by the fact that in virtually all cases, organs were removed, retained and disposed of in the absence of explicit informed consent. Some of these organs were preserved and retained for years in laboratories within hospitals. Parents or other next-of-kin had never been aware that some hospitals had retained/preserved some or all of the organs of their deceased relative.

   However it was the callous disregard with which most organs were disposed that was the source of deepest pain and abhorrence among most families. The retained organs were incinerated along with hospital waste -a manner of disposal that displayed an insensitive disregard to the human origin of these organs. This pain was intensified by a revelation in February 2000 that a leading Dublin hospital had transferred pituitary glands to a large pharmaceutical company in return for a monetary donation, albeit a nominal one. The transfer of pituitary glands was undertaken without the knowledge or consent of next-of-kin.