Irish workers helping with the rebuild of Christchurch in New Zealand are apparently helping to spread sexual disease according to the Cantebury District Health Board.

New Zealand website Stuff reports that while there are no concrete figures to analyse in terms of who is passing sexual disease to who, there is a definite increase in the number of confirmed cases.

The Health Board have started taking note of the amount of appointments that have been made by Irish nationals and Edward Coughlan, board Sexual Health Director has claimed there had “definitely been an increase”.

The Health Board are not just targeting the Irish but have started recording all nationalities of those making appointments, however they have no released these figures.

"There's definitely a lot of casual love going on in the weekends," he said. "There's no way to be sure what's really going on out there but we do know we've got increased numbers of people from Ireland and higher numbers of those associated with the rebuild."

The numbers making appointments this year have jumped to 162 from 75 last year.

Figures in general for chlamydia show that cases have increased from 282 in 2011 to 320 so far for this year.

Lab data also showed that cases of gonorrhoea had increased from 2011.