The Chinese authorities confirmed yesterday they had still failed to make contact with the families of the young couple found murdered in their Dublin apartment last week.
However, it has been learned that a friend of one of the Chinese students is preparing to travel to Ireland to identify the bodies.
A senior public security official in the city of Shenyang in north-east China, where the two 19-year-olds came from, told The Irish Times they had so far failed to locate relatives.
Mystery still surrounds the death of the students, Mr Feng Yue and his girlfriend Ms Liu Quing. A 40-strong team of detectives is trying to establish a motive for the killings. Their bodies were discovered in the apartment at Blackhall Square off North King Street early on March 14th. They had been strangled and the apartment set on fire.
The division chief of the Public Security Bureau's foreign administration office in Shenyang, Mr Wang Liecheng, said yesterday they got notice of the case from the Chinese embassy in Dublin "in the last few days". They were asked to find the families of the two students and inform them of the murders.
He said they had established that the parents of the dead girl were divorced and the mother had moved to Jiamusi city, north of Shenyang. He said staff from his office had been sent there to try to locate her.
Mr Wang said he had also learned that the dead girl had an older sister living in Shenyang, who found out about the incident from the Internet. "We are also trying to locate her," he said.
"As far as the father of the girl and the parents of the boy are concerned, we do not have any information at this stage," he added.
Mr Wang said efforts to locate the families would continue. Funeral arrangements could not be made until the families were contacted.
A friend of Ms Quing's is planning to fly to Ireland but cannot do so until she gets a passport and visa. That could take several days.
Mr Yue was a student at the Centre for English Studies in Dame Street and worked parttime at a Ballinteer pub in the south of the city. Ms Quing was studying English at the Swan Training Centre in Grafton Street and worked in a Chinese restaurant in Malahide.
The murders were discovered last Wednesday after neighbours heard an explosion and fire swept through the bedroom of the apartment where the couple were in bed. It is thought petrol was used, leading to speculation the killer or killers returned to the building to destroy the bodies and evidence. There was no sign of a break-in at the apartment.
Ms Quing arrived in Dublin last March to study English. Her boyfriend arrived some 10 days later. It is believed they were childhood sweethearts. Gardai are trying to establish a motive for the double murder. The range of possible motives includes a financial debt, a grudge, a crime of passion, or a professional attack by the notorious Chinese crime gangs known as Triads. The Irish Embassy in Beijing received almost 10,000 student visa applications last year.
The visa section of the embassy is so busy that the Minister for Education, Dr Woods, announced on a recent visit to Beijing that a new visa unit comprising three full-time Department of Justice staff was to be established.
It was business as usual at the embassy yesterday morning with a small queue of students making visa applications.
One student told The Irish Times she was not aware of the tragedy in Ireland. She said she was going to Ireland because it has a reputation as one of the best countries in which to study English.
The murders have been getting media attention in China, with the Beijing Morning Post carrying a half-page report yesterday.