The North's Minister of Health, Ms Bairbre de Brun, will today lobby her colleagues in the Stormont Executive for additional funding for her department to deal with the hospital beds crisis caused by the flu epidemic.
Ms de Brun told an Assembly committee she would seek additional funding from the Northern Ireland budget at the meeting.
She met the First Minister, Mr David Trimble, and his deputy, Mr Seamus Mallon, to discuss the matter yesterday.
Speaking after a two-hour Assembly committee meeting, she said she was not sure if extra funds could be secured.
"I will need to look at the question of funding, and whether it can come from the wider budget or whether it will become necessary for me to take this from within my own departmental budget," she said.
"To do the latter will obviously have a spin-off effect on other aspects which may in turn rebound at a later date. But I will be speaking to the Executive about this."
Northern Ireland's hospitals have been thrown into crisis following an upsurge in patients admitted to emergency wards since Christmas because of the flu epidemic.
Non-emergency operations are being suspended at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast and have already been stopped at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry. At the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald, some people have been treated on trolleys and chairs.
The SDLP chairman of the Assembly health committee, Dr Joe Hendron MLA, sympathised with the problems faced by the Minister with the number of admissions to hospital reaching unprecedented levels.
He said he was not "pointing the finger" at Ms de Brun, who was clearly doing her best and had been in the job only weeks. Dr Hendron also welcomed the review of intensive care by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Henrietta Campbell, initiated by Ms de Brun.
The procedures for developing a programme for government will also be discussed at this afternoon's Executive meeting.