THE Houses of the Oireachtas spent close to €100,000 on promotional brochures and films to help "engage with the public".

The Oireachtas was intent on making its day-to-day operations more accessible to the public, and commissioned a series of short films and new literature, it said.

According to figures from the Houses of the Oireachtas, it spent €87,000 on a series of short films, which have now been uploaded to the internet.

A further €8,630 was spent on a series of promotional brochures, designed to help explain how politics works.

The House of the Oireachtas said that in the past 18 months, three new visitor leaflets had been introduced to Leinster House.

An adult brochure entitled 'Know Your Parliament', a pull-out poster aimed at post-primary students and an animated flier for younger children were all introduced.

The spokesman said: "A targeted approach has been adopted in the creation of these visitor materials and was segmented into three audiences.

"Each of the three designs is available in both English and Irish. All of the materials were written in a plain and accessible format. The cost of producing these three brochures is €8,630."

The Houses of the Oireachtas said the series of short films had been produced.

A spokesman explained: "The film can be viewed as a single film or as a series
of shorts or segments and we are confident that it will be of interest to a wide audience.

"Some segments have been produced in a way that we hope will be particularly attractive to a younger audience. People can view the film either via the Oireachtas website or alternatively it has been uploaded to YouTube and will be available on Vimeo for use by schools."

Irish director Lee Cronin produced the films, which were made at a cost of €87,000, the Houses of the Oireachtas said.

The initiative to increase public awareness of the parliament had been spearheaded by the former Ceann Comhairle John O'Donoghue and involves a series of outreach programmes for schools as well as visits to Leinster House.