An outbreak of salmonella which has led to 50 people being seriously ill and the suspected death of one woman last weekend has been traced to a single source.

The producer has been named as Flanreil Food Services in O'Dwyer's Pub in Portmarnock, who was providing the food for a number of First Communion parties on the weekend of 13th of May.

The Assistant National Director for Public Health with the HSE said it is probably the largest outbreak of salmonella in Ireland in the past ten years and the cause of the problem is believed to have been poultry.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said: "We, on average, get somewhere between two and 500 cases of salmonella a year over the last decade.

"This is probably the largest outbreak we've had in that period of time, but then you can understand why that is, because there's been a single event, clearly on that weekend, but there were a large amount of groups involved."

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