Less than a quarter of second-level students have the option of taking Spanish as a subject, with more schools offering Latin than Italian, a new survey has found.
The survey by the Joint Managerial Body (JMB) shows that just 96 of its 400 members provide Spanish as a subject. Last June employers' body Ibec called for a broader variety of modern languages to be taught at second- level.
But the figures also show that, while 28 of the voluntary secondary schools represented by the JMB currently offer Latin as a subject, just 17 offer Italian. Some 378 schools offer French and 314 offer German.
The JMB, which represents over 60 per cent of second-level schools, estimates that the number of schools which can offer increasingly important languages such as Chinese, Russian and Japanese is also less than 10 for each subject.
The figures have prompted Ibec to repeat calls for the introduction of a national language policy. Assistant director of enterprise with Ibec, Caroline Nash, says such a policy should include Irish and foreign languages in a co-ordinated approach. Because there is a growing number of students whose first language is not English, it should also include English.
While the take-up of languages such as Spanish and Italian has improved in recent years, this is not happening quickly enough to meet the country's future needs, she said. Initiatives at primary and post-primary level, although welcome, were also taking place "in a vacuum".
"We don't have a national policy for language," she said. "There are now 25 states in the EU . . . the more we are able to communicate with these nationalities, the more it is to our benefit."
General secretary of the JMB George O'Callaghan said a number of factors determines whether a school is able to offer students a broad range of languages.
These include sufficient funding, the popularity of different subjects with students and the availability of skilled personnel.
"If there is a smaller number of students learning Spanish, then there is a smaller number taking it up at third-level. So there are fewer teachers."
Some languages are perceived as being more closely linked than others with employment opportunities in robust economies, he added.
"A school can say this morning we're going to offer Chinese, but where are they going to get the resources to do that?" he asked. "The fact is you can't simply just go out and hire Spanish teachers if the Department of Education and Science don't give you a teacher for Spanish."
According to Ibec, last year, only 4 per cent of students who sat a foreign language paper took Spanish, compared to 75 per cent who took French.
There are an estimated 332 million native Spanish speakers in the world, compared to just 72 million native French speakers, it says.
There are a total of 400 voluntary secondary schools, who are represented by the Joint Managerial Body (JMB).
Number of schools offering foreign languages
French 378
German 314
Italian 17
Spanish 96
Latin 28
Greek 3
Hebrew 1
Statistics supplied to JMB by the Department of Education also show that: Only 68 students are studying Japanese for next year's Leaving Certificate exam; 27 are studying Russian; and None are studying Chinese.