Significant progress has been made in the criminal investigation into the weekend tragedy in which eight stowaways were found dead in a packed freight container in Wexford.
As the five survivors of the ordeal recovered in hospital last night, it emerged that Belgian police had questioned a truck driver who had transported the group on the final leg of their journey on mainland Europe.
Belgian police have also located and forensically examined a "safe house" in Brussels where it is believed most, if not all, of the 13 mostly Turkish migrants had gathered before embarking on their clandestine journey to Ireland, sources told The Irish Times.
Garda∅ have said they are convinced the migrants thought they were embarking on a sailing of just a few hours to a British port when they allowed themselves to be sealed into the 40-ft metal container by the criminals.
Instead, the container was loaded at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge onto a cargo ship bound for Ireland, and the group, including five children, endured a 53-hour sailing through a force 10 gale.
Garda∅ believe the stowaways paid between £5,000 and £8,000 each to smugglers who helped them hide in the container.
The group consisted of 11 Turkish nationals, including a Kurdish family, as well as one Albanian and one Algerian who were among the survivors.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will raise the crisis caused by the weekend's tragedy when he meets fellow EU leaders at the Laeken summit in Belgium this week.
He will say the EU must direct economic aid to the countries from which the most asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants are fleeing.
Defending the Government's policies, Mr Ahern's spokesman said: "We could take hundreds of thousands and it would not be a drop in the ocean."
The EU is not "Fortress Europe", but it must have rules to govern immigration, he added.
Meanwhile, garda∅ are liaising closely with police forces in Britain, France, Italy, the UK and Germany in their efforts to track the criminals behind the tragedy. A member of the Garda National Immigration Bureau has travelled to Belgium and another to France. Belgian police said last night they would not comment on an ongoing investigation.
The Minister for Justice, Mr John O'Donoghue, said the surviving stowaways had been through a terrible trauma and if they made applications for asylum they would receive "sympathetic and humane" consideration.
He added: "There is also the provision, of course, even if they were not to qualify for refugee status, for an order to be made allowing them to stay on humanitarian grounds".