Six Irish people who stayed in a top London hotel the same time Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned are being sought by officials, it emerged today.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it has located four of the six names given by UK officials earlier today and will continue to trace the whereabouts of the remaining two.
Hundreds of guests and customers who were in the Millennium Hotel and its bar on November 1st are being offered tests to determine if they have been contaminated with radiation.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs stressed that the tests are precautionary, but that those contacted will be urged to call health chiefs in the UK as well as their own GP and local health authority.
The spy fell ill after meeting three Russian men at the hotel on November 1st and died in hospital just over three weeks later.
He was buried on Friday in a sealed coffin. Traces of polonium-210 are reported to have been found in a fourth-floor room at the hotel, as well as on a cup from the hotel's Pine Bar.
All seven staff working at the bar on the day of Mr Litvinenko's visit have been contaminated with polonium-210. Two police officers working on the murder inquiry have also tested positive for polonium-210. A team of nine Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detectives is currently in Russia to investigate Mr Litvinenko's poisoning.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it had been contacted by the British Foreign Office in relation to six Irish people were also staying at the hotel around the same time.
"We were in a position today to contact four of the six Irish people listed by the British Foreign Office as having visited or stayed at the Millennium Hotel and the Pine Bar at the hotel on or about November 1st, the date on which the late Mr Litvinenko may have received the fatal dose of polonium-210," said a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs.