Gardaí are treating as suspicious the death of a homeless man in his mid-30s whose body was found by workers sorting through rubbish at one of the country's largest private waste facilities.
The discovery was made shortly after midday yesterday at the Mr Binman depot in Luddemore, Grange, Co Limerick, some 12km outside the city.
It is believed the dead man had been living rough in Limerick city where he had moved to in recent days from the Cork area.
Gardaí said his identity would not be released until his relatives, many of whom live in England, had all been notified.
It is understood the deceased had a number of marks on his body, but gardaí said they would not be in a position to confirm how he had suffered these injuries until the results of a postmortem were known.
The man's body was removed from the Co Limerick plant yesterday afternoon to the Dublin City Mortuary where a full postmortem is due to be carried out this morning.
"We have to await the findings of the State Pathologist and that will determine what caused this man's death," said Supt Frank O'Brien who is leading the investigation.
The man's remains were found at 12.15pm when workers were separating rubbish that had been deposited by three trucks, which arrived back to the depot earlier that morning.
Two of the trucks had collected waste from Limerick city and the third had come from south Tipperary.
Mr Binman has some 20,000 customers in the mid-west region alone and critical to the Garda investigation will be determining which truck the dead man's body came in on.
The company's chief executive Martin Sheehan confirmed yesterday that the alarm was raised by one of the workers who was transferring rubbish from where it had been tipped into the recycling plant.
"From our point of view it's a very sad situation. This man has a mother and father and maybe even a wife and family and we feel very sorry for these people," said Mr Sheehan.
"One of our workers was transferring the rubbish from where it is tipped into the recycling plant when he thought he saw a body and he stopped what he was doing and called the yard foreman," he added.
The Mr Binman facility remained closed yesterday afternoon while gardaí carried out technical examinations of the scene but arrangements were in place to have rubbish sent elsewhere.
Anyone with information is asked to contact gardaí at Roxboro on (061) 214340.