One woman, naming herself as "Kelly Fishers" from Lagos in Nigeria, has already contacted at least five Irish men with whom she is keen to start a relationship. Other Irish men have received similar proposals from at least three separate Nigerian woman and at least one Russian woman, all looking to travel to Ireland to marry.

"I will be glad if I find an honest man that will love me for rest of our lives we will leave hapilly [sic] and we will not feel disappointed at each other, " Fishers told one Dublin man by sending him a message through the network's internal email system.

MySpace, an online social network where users set up their own personal page and then add 'friends', is mostly popular with musicians, but anyone can join for free. At the time of writing, there were just under 99 million registered users. MySpace has tens of thousands of users in Ireland. Although many MySpacers use the site for networking, it can also be used for dating and, according to many personal profiles, "serious relationships".

"It's totally weird. I've had porn and bank scams and all sorts of cons sent as spam, but this actually seems to be legitimate, " said 'Paul' from Dublin, who received a marriage proposal from a Nigerian woman who said she would offer him cooking, cleaning, children and sex in return for a house and job in Ireland. "You have to go to the trouble of setting up a page and then seeking out people to contact, so I reckon they are serious, " he told the Sunday Tribune.

Fishers said she wanted to get married to an Irish man in order to look after her ageing parents. She finished her message by pleading, "I want to meet u when and how can we meet?", and left her email address and phone number.

Internet users are constantly warned to only meet someone in 'real life' who they first came in contact with online if they are certain the person is who they say they are, and also to meet them in a public place accompanied by friends.

A survey on teen and preteen internet usage in Ireland last week showed that, of the number of children who meet people on the internet, the 'children' they meet turn out to be adults in one-quarter of all cases.

One in 10 children surveyed in Ireland who had made 'real-life' contact with people they met online had been abused by the people with whom they had arranged meetings.