The figures, released in answer to a series of Dail questions by Labour TD Eamon Gilmore, show just one of the 15 government departments . . . Agriculture . . .

has opted not to bring in PR consultants.

Although a large percentage of the outlay went on publicity campaigns for a variety of government schemes and programmes, the expenditure of 7,410 a day on external PR consultants is likely to reignite allegations that the government is too quick to outsource work to consultants.

The Department of Environment is by far the biggest spender on public relations consultants, with expenditure of 6.8m over the past four years. However, this includes major spending on advertising and publicity for anti-litter, plastic-bag-levy, electronicvoting and electoral-registration awareness campaigns.

The next biggest spenders were the Department of Justice and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, with outlays of 1.46m and 805,000 respectively. The Department of Justice figure includes 655,000 to Fleishman Hillard Saunders for PR services to the National Disability Authority from 2003 to 2005.

The Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism spent 622,638 since 2002, including 223,611 to Murray Consultants, described as "PR consultants for department, 2003-2006".