The legislation governing the donation system, the 1832 Anatomy Act, is well due an update to take account of far-reaching changes in medicine and scientific development, the medical colleges believe.
While the Department of Health recently stated the legislation was "obsolete" and had not been used except for issuing licences to schools of anatomy, the schools themselves say they were never told of this and that they were reporting to a part-time inspector of anatomy until relatively recently.
Massive advances in medicine and the innumerable bioethical issues involved are simply not catered for by the legislation.
"That's a big problem," says Prof John Fraher of UCC. "There are limits on what can be done - it's basically dissection to educate the students on the anatomy of the living body."
"But what are the limits? Can you keep parts? We always ask the donor if it's okay if we keep a part or samples."
Prof Fraher, who is secretary of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland has had "considerable interaction" with the British and Scottish parliaments on their new legislation, which clearly defines the context in which donations take place.
He intends to write to the Minister for Health to seek such changes here, he says.
"We are operating in a vacuum, which is very unsatisfactory. It's a grey area and clearly you don't want that because it's such a sensitive area. You only want to do what is completely okay."
Prof Fraher plans to write to Ms Harney about the need for changes in the legislation and on the question of appointing a full-time inspector of anatomy.
"I'm going to write to her personally to explain the need in the present context how important it is, because we want to operate within a clearly-defined framework," he says.
Elaine Edwards