The Government is offering DNA technology to help to determine if missing Irish people are among the dead found in Thailand after the St Stephen's Day tsunami disaster.
Garda technical assistance is being offered to take DNA samples from the families of missing people about whom there is most concern.
The samples would be sent to Thailand to see if they match DNA from bodies recovered there.
The Department of Foreign Affairs is now extremely concerned about the fate of four Irish people who have been missing in Thailand for over a week.
The Government is also to ask the Garda to trace relatives in Ireland of a further 40 people who may have been in the South Asia region at the time of the disaster.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that there had been no confirmed Irish fatalities. However, there are now four people on its list of "high risk" missing persons.
The four are: Ms Eilís Finnegan from Ballyfermot in Dublin, Ms Lucy Coyle from Killiney in Dublin, Mr Conor Keightley from Co Tyrone and Mr Michael Murphy from Co Wexford.
The Irish ambassador to Thailand, Mr Dan Mulhall, who has been heading the search for missing Irish people, said in a radio interview at the weekend that he was "beginning to be resigned to the fact that we may suffer a small number of Irish deaths".
Mr Mulhall told The Irish Times yesterday that a number of Irish families had arrived in Thailand to join the search for their relatives who were missing.
Mr Mulhall said that so far no Irish person had been identified among the dead. He said that he and his team had had to deal with all kinds of logistical difficulties. One problem had been to differentiate between Irish citizens and Britons or Australians with Irish names.
Meanwhile, the Government is to ask the Garda to trace the relatives of around 40 Irish people considered by the Department of Foreign Affairs to be at "medium risk".
These are people whom the Department of Foreign Affairs believes - based, in general, on information provided by friends or acquaintances - were in the south Asia region last weekend.
It is hoped that relatives of these people could provide details of their whereabouts so they could be eliminated from the missing lists.
In recent days the Department of Foreign Affairs has considerably scaled back - from 80 to around 40 - the number of people considered to be at "medium risk".
Meanwhile, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Defence held talks by telephone yesterday morning about the possibility of sending Irish soldiers to the disaster area.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, told The Irish Times last night that constitutionally the Government would have to receive a request for military personnel from the UN before the issue of sending Irish troops could be considered.
However, he said that such a request may not be made as many countries affected had large armies and had indicated that their priority was for financial aid.
The Taoiseach and the Minster for Foreign Affairs are to meet on Tuesday with non-governmental organisations involved in the relief effort to discuss how the €10 million pledged by the Government should be spent and how the aid programme from Ireland should be co-ordinated. The Cabinet will discuss the Irish response to the crisis when it meets on Wednesday.
