The cost of housing asylum-seekers and refugees and paying them supplementary welfare allowances exceeded £53 million last year.
This figure includes £11.5 million for housing asylum-seekers in emergency accommodation, an estimated £35 million in supplementary welfare allowances and some £6.4 million in rent supplements for the first nine months of last year for people placed in private rented accommodation.
The emergency accommodation costs of asylum-seekers are met by Dublin Corporation, while the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs pays private rent subsidies and supplementary welfare allowances.
The £11.5 million bill for emergency accommodation for asylum-seekers was paid to owners of B&Bs, hostels and hotels.
Provision of emergency accommodation for asylum-seekers and refugees in 1998 cost £12.57 million.
The present rates charged by those providing emergency accommodation are £15 per night per adult, £10 per child and £2 per baby.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Eastern Health Board has confirmed that six staff at the Refugee Applications Centre in Dublin who had tested positive for tuberculosis in an initial screening programme have now been given the all-clear.
A further three workers at the centre in Mount Street were given the all-clear following X-rays earlier this month.
Initial screening involves a skin test. If the person tested develops a reaction, then further tests, including chest X-rays, are necessary to confirm a diagnosis.
The board has said that the fact that some workers had shown a positive reaction in the initial screening programme was not unexpected, as it indicated only that they had been exposed to TB at some stage in the past.