The Department of Foreign Affairs has spent €750,000 on language tuition for its staff over the past four years.

According to information released by the department in response to a Freedom of Information request, tutors and language schools are receiving hourly payments of up to €67.50 for one-to-one tuition in languages including Maltese, Hungarian, Japanese and Polish.

Spending on language tuition rose by 23 per cent to €191,666 last year from €156,435 in 2012. Over the last four years, spending came to €744,980.

According to the department, “hourly rates charged by tutors/language schools for one-to-one tuition in Ireland range from €30 to €67.50”.

The department spent €172,020 on language tuition from September 1st last year to the end of June this year for tuition in 29 languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Sign Language, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese.

It confirmed the individuals or firms to receive the top 10 payments last year were Alliance Française, Cathy Hartung, Confucius Institute for Ireland, En Française, German Language Centre, Instituto Cervantes, Languages Unlimited, Marie Thérèse Saffre, Sandford Language Institute and Trinity College Dublin.

Ireland spent €43 million on our embassies last year, with a further €7 million spent on missions in Africa and Vietnam.