Legislation should be enacted which would allow adults to decide whether they want a postmortem to be carried out on their remains.
The recommendation is made in the latest report on postmortem practices published yesterday by a working group chaired by the University College Cork (UCC) law lecturer Dr Deirdre Madden.
The report also says that "legislation should provide that a person aged between 12 and 16 years may authorise a postmortem of their own body after death, and the removal and retention of organs for purposes of diagnosis, education and research. It should be presumed that the minor is competent to make such a decision unless there is evidence to the contrary."
The working group also agreed with a recommendation made by Dr Madden in an earlier report, published in January, that legislation must be enacted to ensure that no hospital postmortem is carried out without consent.
The earlier report examined the retention without consent of children's organs by Irish hospitals during postmortems over many years, going back to the 1970s. The new report says legislation should clearly set out the circumstances in which a postmortem examination on a foetus or stillborn child may be carried out.
And it says in relation to postmortems on adults: "The policy of legislation in this context should be that a competent adult may, while alive, authorise the carrying out of the postmortem examination. If the deceased has duly given such authorisation, there would be no legal obligation on the hospital to seek authorisation from next of kin.
"However, if the next of kin of the deceased have strong objections to a postmortem examination, the hospital should discuss this in detail with them and consider whether or not to proceed with the examination."
Minister for Health Mary Harney said her officials would prepare a memorandum for government, setting out the requirements for appropriate legislation to give legal effect to these recommendations.