The discovery was made by staff at the AES recycling centre in Nenagh just after 9am. Management then called gardaí and an investigation was launched.

It was determined that the body of the man, who is thought to have been in his 40s, had come from a large industrial bin which had been collected in Limerick city centre.

It is understood there were signs of decomposition when the body was initially examined. However, there were no visible signs of violence found on the remains.

The man’s body was removed to University Hospital Limerick where deputy state pathologist Michael Curtis was completing a postmortem at around 6pm yesterday.

Gardaí are satisfied that the man had been dead for a number of days and the bin truck did not have a crush system for collected waste.

Gardaí believe the man was homeless and, due to the wet weather had got into the bin in recent days.

They are now trying to identify who he was and how he died, but it is understood there are no signs of suspicious circumstances.

Meanwhile, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive has released figures from its winter count on rough sleeping. It found that in the Dublin region on the night of November 30 into the morning of December 1, there were 91 people confirmed as sleeping rough.

Of those, 73 were male, 16 were female and two were described as “unknown”. There were 71 Irish people, 6 were non-Irish and the nationalities of the other 34 were classed as unknown.

An age breakdown showed 13 were aged 18-30 years; 33 were aged 31-40; 17 were aged 41-50; 5 were aged 51-60; and 4 were aged 61+. There were 19 whose ages were unknown.

The 91 people found to be sleeping rough on the night of the count was significantly lower for the corresponding figure of 168 in 2014.

Homeless charity, the Peter McVerry Trust, welcomed the reduction but said it was disappointed that the number was not lower still given the major efforts made by the sector to provide additional homeless accommodation in the past year.

Pat Doyle, the trust’s chief executive, said: “In the space of 12 months, around 500 additional bed spaces have been made available in Dublin.

“In the first nine months of 2015, the sector also moved 739 people out of homelessness, the best figure on record when measured against the same period in previous years.

“Despite the major effort made, we still see the number of people sleeping rough at unacceptably high levels,” he said.