Almost a quarter of all asylum-seekers entering the State are relocated to the Southern Health Board (SHB) region of Cork and Kerry, according to a confidential report presented to the Department of Health.
The report was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Independent Kerry North candidate Mr James Kennedy, who has highlighted the "asylum-seeker issue".
The business case report, "Health and Welfare Needs of Asylum-Seekers, Southern Health Board", says the increasing number of asylum-seekers is placing greater demands on hospital services. It is also stretching resources in communities that are already deprived.
There is an immediate need for €4.5 million to meet maternity services, screening services, community care, laboratory services and infectious disease services to cater for the needs of the asylum-seekers in the area, according to the snapshot report, conducted in February and presented last month to the Department of Health. Half the money is needed for the Cork maternity service.
The report also addresses the question of infectious and tropical diseases among asylum-seekers, and the increasing need for laboratory and follow-up screening services.
Health screening is voluntary and some 75 per cent of appointments for health screening and vaccination services offered to asylum-seekers are taken up.
"Asylum-seekers arrive in Ireland from countries with high prevalence of infectious diseases, such as hepatitis B, C, and HIV. Many are non-immune to vaccine-preventable illness such as rubella and chickenpox . . ," according to the report.
With immunity to rubella and chickenpox significantly lower in asylum-seekers living in the SHB region compared to the Irish population, the asylum-seeker population's immunity to the virus was reduced. The risk of infection also increased in those non-immune in the native population.
The report says tropical and other unusual illnesses are increasingly seen in the children of asylum-seekers.
It claims an estimated 3,362 asylum-seekers now reside in the two counties in the SHB, and this is set to increase in 2002.
The figures, however, do not include the numbers of infants born here and numbers for family reunification in 2002.
Fine Gael's Mr Bernard Allen, a TD and a member of the health board, was given a copy of the report yesterday.
He said the report highlighted a very serious situation which indicated that the influx of almost a quarter of all asylum-seekers to the region was "stretching resources to breaking point".
"This is not anybody talking in racist terms but in terms of resources required to support all sections of the community, both settled and transient, and it warns of the consequences if these services are not allocated," he said.