More than a quarter of Government departments and agencies consistently failed to provide even the most basic level of service through Irish to customers who contacted them by telephone.
The Office of An Coimisinéir Teanga also found that the level of service provided by a further 29% was deemed to be inadequate to meet their statutory obligations.
Details of an audit carried out by that Office are contained in its Annual Report for 2010 published in Galway today.
'This level of failure is all the more significant as the audit covered only those public bodies which had statutory language plans in place for more than four year,' said An Coimisinéir Teanga, Seán Ó Cuirreáin.
During the year, 700 complaints were made to An Coimisinéir Teanga about difficulties or problems accessing State services through Irish - more complaints than were made in any year since the Office was first established.
The vast majority of cases were resolved through informal negotiations with the relevant public body or by providing advice to the complainant.
The majority of the complaints came from Dublin (41%) with significant numbers also from counties along the western seaboard: Clare (9.5%), Galway (9%), Kerry (6%), Donegal (4%), Cork (4%) and Mayo (3%).
Nearly one in five complaints came from Gaeltacht areas.
Mr Ó Cuirreáin described as 'alarming' the revelations during the past year that only 1.5% of the administrative staff of the Department of Education and Skills could provide service in Irish.
This represented a decrease of 50% in the past five years.
Acknowledging this to be a common problem throughout the civil and public sector, he said it showed more clearly than anything else the gap between the ability to provide services through English and the ability to provide services through Irish.
