IRISH holidaymakers suspected of catching the potentially fatal avian flu in Beijing were allowed to leave Dublin airport without being assessed by public health officials.

Last week, a British Midlands flight from London to Dublin was quarantined after eight passengers, who flew to London on a chartered flight from the Chinese capital, became severely ill.

Two of the passengers developed flu-like symptoms and began vomiting at London’s Heathrow airport and later boarded a flight to Dublin. The pilot, who knew 40 of his 188 passengers and eight crew had travelled together from Beijing, quarantined the plane and called ahead for medical assistance. He suspected they had contracted the deadly bird flu.

However, when he landed in Dublin no public health experts were available because of a strike. The passengers were allowed to leave the plane after being diagnosed with food poisoning by an airport GP and were only checked by public health officials several days later, when they were given the all clear.

The incident exposes weaknesses in Ireland’s national flu pandemic and bio-terror plans. The country has no 24-hour system to protect against outbreaks of disease such as Sars or bio-terror attacks including anthrax, nor does it have a fall-back plan in the case of strikes.

“There was no public health response. We could have had a serious incident on our hands,” said Paul McKeown, a specialist in public health with the National Disease Surveillance Centre. “People’s lives were placed at risk — viruses are highly tenacious. We avoided a crisis only because we were lucky; but we can’t rely on lucky escapes.”

A long-running dispute over pay and status means Ireland’s 300 public health doctors are refusing to provide out-of-hours and weekend cover. The matter is before the Labour Relations Commission.

“We could have found ourselves in the middle of a serious international outbreak,” said Catherine Hayes, a public health doctor and the chair of the public health committee of the Irish Medical Organisation.

“We could have been dealing with avian bird flu or Sars. We have now traced the victims, who suffered from a norovirus (gastroenteritis), but we were two days behind in our investigation. Without resolution of this dispute we will remain completely exposed in the event of a serious outbreak.”

Ireland’s vulnerability to outbreaks of disease has already been exposed. At the height of the global Sars crisis two years ago, a Chinese immigrant suspected of having the virus absconded from a Dublin hostel where she was supposed to be monitored.

Late last year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) expressed concern that there could be an outbreak of a human version of avian influenza at any time. “We could be getting closer to such a pandemic,” said the WHO, “and, if it happens, it’s going to be worse than Sars was.”

An outbreak of influenza poses the biggest threat to Ireland’s public health, according to a recent anti-terrorism report.

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