A number of dead birds were rounded up by the Department of Agriculture at the weekend and have been sent for examination to laboratories where bird flu can be identified.
The move comes in the wake of confirmation on Saturday that the potentially deadly H5NI strain of avian flu had been found on a turkey farm in France.
The department, in collecting the dead fowl, was acting on a surge of calls to a hotline. Some 80 calls were logged on Saturday, with a further 28 recorded yesterday on the 24-hour line, which was set up on Thursday following a meeting of the expert group to advise Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan on dealing with the crisis.
A spokesman for the department would not say what type of birds were collected on foot of calls over the weekend or where exactly they were found.
He said, however, that all the calls have been followed up "and the birds involved, collected".
These birds have now been sent for examination at the department's laboratories. If a case of the disease is identified, samples must be sent to the EU central laboratory in Weybridge, England, for confirmation.
Meanwhile, the expert group, headed by Prof Michael Monaghan of UCD, will meet again this week to report to the Minister on whether or not additional safeguards should be put in place.
Yesterday Hong Kong barred poultry imports from France, while authorities in eastern China scrambled to contain an outbreak of the virus that has left two people, a woman farmer and a nine-year-old girl from two neighbouring Chinese provinces, critically ill.
Switzerland reported its first case of H5 avian flu in a wild bird yesterday, while a cull of poultry was initiated in parts of France.