People from outside the Dublin area accounted for almost one-third of planned admissions to the city's main hospitals last year for procedures "routinely available in their own areas".
This is despite the fact that the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) agreed last year to put in place protocols to curb the influx of patients from other regions coming to its hospitals for treatments they could readily access in their own areas.
The extent of the continuing problem is outlined in the ERHA's 2003 annual report, published yesterday.
Asked what had happened to its plans to curb admissions, a spokeswoman said the ERHA held discussions with other health boards and "drew their attention to the need for them to only refer patients to the eastern region where it was clinically essential for them to do so, taking into account the services available locally in their own regions".
Nothing seems to have changed, however.
It is estimated that €174 million was spent by the ERHA on treating patients from other health board areas in 2001, and some 270,000 bed days were used in hospitals in the east by patients from outside the region that year.
However, some of these costs and bed days would apply to patients referred to the eastern region for specialist services.
Meanwhile, the authority's annual report said there were 1.9 million attendances at acute hospitals in its region in 2003.
Some 23,000 babies were born, about one-third of them to single mothers. The pressure and challenges posed by the increase in the number of non-national births is noted.
These are increasing by around 50 per cent every year, the report said.
It also said that, although births to teenagers remained stable, at about 6-7 per cent, the percentage of births to mothers aged 35 years or more had risen by 60 per cent, from 2,964 in 1993 to 4,744 in 2001.