The Government has rejected claims by Labour that it cynically withheld information about the level of non-national births until the day of the citizenship referendum.
The Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said he had been waiting for information from the Government on non-national births since mid-March, but received a reply only yesterday.
The information from the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) on non-national births, broken down by nationality of the mother, was posted last Friday, polling day in the referendum.
It reveals that some 4,249 babies were born to non-EU nationals in the three main Dublin maternity hospitals last year. This included some 1,528 Nigerians and 470 Romanians, but there are also large numbers of other nationalities, including Filipinos.
Mr Rabbitte said he had pursued the information formally and informally for several weeks, but received no reply.
"I got pages of details on where babies were born which, for the seven weeks before the referendum, I was told was not in the possession of any agency," he said in the Dáil.
While the Department of Justice claimed Mr McDowell had cited figures in a Dáil debate on April 21st, Mr Rabbitte said such figures were incomplete.
Mr McDowell was able to cite figures for the top five countries of origin for non-national births, but Mr Rabbitte wanted information about all countries of origin.
"I just think it's cynical and it's typical of the lack of accountability and the way that elected members of Dáil Éireann are treated by this Government."
However, such claims were rejected by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, and the ERHA, which said "there was no intention to delay sending this information to Deputy Rabbitte".
A spokeswoman for Mr Martin said the masters of the maternity hospitals made "indicative figures" available to the Government, but a detailed breakdown of figures for all nationalities was not available to the ERHA.
"It was a complex project that required the collation and verification of figures from in the region of 140 countries. This material, as they said, wasn't material that was routinely available," she said.
The ERHA said Mr Rabbitte's question was one of over 1,000 routine parliamentary questions and public representations dealt with by the ERHA each year.
