There will be further cutbacks in health services in the North Eastern Health Board, according to its chief executive officer.
Mr Paul Robinson is putting together a detailed submission for the Minister for Health and Children on the board's "unique" case for additional funding.
A delegation of members is meeting the Minister next month and will argue that due to the huge increase in population in the region, as well as demands on acute hospitals, it urgently needs more money.
The latest census figures found that while the average increase in population in any health board area was 8 per cent, it was 12.5 per cent in the north-east. Maintaining the existing level of health services "is proving difficult", the board's financial officer, Mr Seoirse Ó hAodha, told members this week.
The total allocation from the Department for providing all services to asylum-seekers was €200,000 last year but the current estimated cost for services to them this year is €1.3 million.
"Significant costs are incurred in providing an adequate level of health screening, vaccination programme and developmental tests and the provision of transport to and from services for those clients in direct provision," he said.
Consultant paediatrician Dr Alf Nicolson, a board member, said an internal audit calculated that the cost of caring for asylum-seekers' babies in the special care unit in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, for the first six months of last year was €500,000.
Seventeen per cent of all births in the first three months of this year were to non-nationals, such births tended to be more complicated and costly and "have led to severe cost pressures at the hospital".
Babies born to non-nationals were more likely to be of low birth weight and premature, thereby increasing the likelihood they would be cared for in the special baby unit.
The board was over budget by €3.24 million at the end of March and while activity at its acute hospitals was up on predicted levels, Mr Robinson said, "We should be congratulating ourselves on the acute services being ahead but we are not funded for this."