As the Government and the beef industry move to reassure consumers that Irish beef is safe following the diagnosis of the first indigenous case of vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease, investigations continue into where the infection might have happened.
Medical staff working at the Dublin hospital where the 24- year-old patient is being treated have ruled out infection through surgery or blood transfusion, which means he contracted the disease by eating beef products.
The investigation is looking at the possibility that he could have eaten contaminated beef products while in Britain before 1996; eaten imported contaminated burgers or sausages here in the period up to 1996 or was exposed to infected beef here.
Beef products from Britain continued to be imported into the Republic until 1996 when the link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and vCJD was revealed.
The number of recorded cases of BSE from 1989, when it was first identified here, remained at fewer than 20 annually until 1996, when there was a dramatic increase. The numbers jumped from 16 in 1995 to 75 the following year and continued to rise until they peaked in 2002 at 333 cases.
Since then, they have dropped to 183 last year with 110 recorded so far this year.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland and the Department of Agriculture and Food stress that Irish beef is safe to eat and has been safe in the past because of the controls imposed here since 1989.
Dr John O'Brien, chief executive of the Food Safety Authority, said strict controls in place were monitored to protect consumers.
"It remains unclear where this young man got infected but unfortunately, the case is not unexpected because it was predicted by those studying the possible impact of the disease on human health," he said.
The Department says that Irish controls are ahead of the rest of Europe and the number of cases of BSE had been dramatically reduced in the last two years.
He confirmed that beef products and foods containing extract of beef from Britain where there have been more than 140,000 cases since 1985, were coming into the Republic up until 1996 when the link between the two diseases was established.
Fine Gael's spokesman on agriculture and food, Mr Denis Naughten, said the recent diagnosis of vCJD here highlighted the wholly inadequate labelling of Irish beef.
While he acknowledged that Ireland had strict regulations concerning the production and processing of its own beef, he said there was "a significant problem" with the labelling of Irish meat produce.
"In a recent survey by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland for example," Mr Naughten said, "significant amounts of beef labelled as Irish were actually South American."