Information about an incident similar to the home circumcision in Waterford, after which a four-week-old boy subsequently died on Monday, was not passed on to gardaí by either the family concerned or the health authorities.
It has also emerged that there is considerable opposition among some senior Irish medical professionals to circumcisions being carried out in Irish hospitals for purely cultural reasons.
One senior obstetrician, Dr Peter McKenna, told The Irish Times that "just because people are going off and getting it done in backstreet operations doesn't mean we should bring it into Irish hospitals".
Gardaí were yesterday searching for a man at the centre of the Waterford incident. He is believed to have travelled at the weekend from Belfast to Dublin, where he carried out two other circumcision procedures, before going on to Waterford on Sunday.
However, in July 2001, a similar incident, which was notified to the Northern Area Health Board (NAHB), was not reported by the board to the Garda.
It occurred when a Nigerian family paid another foreign national £100 to perform the operation on their infant son.
He was subsequently rushed to Temple Street National Children's Hospital suffering from blood-loss. He made a full recovery.
The NAHB was informed of the incident after Dr Maurice Guéret, a member of the Eastern Regional Health Authority, was contacted by the boy's father. He advised health authorities that the gardaí be brought in.
A spokeswoman for the NAHB said it "attempted to get the family to complain to the gardaí and offered to go to the gardaí with them but the family did not want to do that".
In addition, the family - at the behest of the health board - tried "in various ways" to contact the man who had carried out the procedure, but were unable. "The man went to ground," she said.
Asked if the health board itself reported the matter to the Garda, the spokeswoman said she did not know. Gardaí confirmed that Fitzgibbon St Garda station, which deals with complaints relating to any patient at Temple Street, had never been informed.
Dr Guéret claimed the Department of Health had also been made aware of the matter. However, a spokesman for the Department said last night it was still checking its records to see if this was actually the case.
At present, there are no circumcision services available in Irish maternity hospitals. The three Dublin maternity hospitals refer cases to either Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin or Temple Street National Children's Hospital.
Dr Declan Keane, master of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles St, said that it was rare for requests for circumcision to be made by parents, but cases are referred to Temple Street or Crumlin.
However, in Dr Keane's experience, consultant urologists, who carry out such procedures, usually refuse to do so on infants.
"That would seem to be their standard line at the moment," he said. Dr Keane understood the consultants had specific patient health reasons for refusing to do the operation on babies.
Dr Peter McKenna, of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, said he was strongly opposed to the procedure being carried out in Irish hospitals for purely cultural reasons, and saw male circumcision in much the same light as female circumcision.
"I don't believe in cutting bits off baby boys or baby girls. I'm a fundamentalist in that regard," he said.