The State has to fill thousands of positions with overseas employees because Irish workers do not have the foreign language skills, the Minister for Education has said.
There was a "mismatch" between the Republic's language skills and the needs of industry, he said.
Dr Woods was speaking in Dublin at the opening of a campaign to encourage the speaking of more languages.
"For the first time in our history, we have many jobs here in Ireland which require skills in a wide range of languages.
"At the moment many of these posts have to be filled from recruitment abroad," he said.
Prof David Little of Trinity's Centre for Language and Communication Studies said a major problem was the dearth of statistics on what languages people spoke in Ireland, although research last year indicated that less than a third of the population could speak another language apart from English.
During the European Year of Languages campaign well-known people have undertaken to learn a new language. They include the broadcaster Marian Finucane, the actor Stephen Rea, the campaigner Ms Olive Braiden and Mr David Malone, a paralympian.