The authors have studied the IRAS extragalactic catalogue (Lonsdale et al., 1985), with the aim of reliably identifying quasi-stellar objects. Using the best available data in the literature on the positions and continuous spectra of QSO's, it is concluded that, of the over sixty associations tentatively suggested in the catalogue itself, on positional grounds alone, only nine satisfy the search criteria applied here, whilst some two or three others can be deemed possible associations of optical quasars with IRAS sources.