In the past two years, more than €15m of taxpayers’ money has been lavished on the extravagant refurbishments of Irish ambassadors’ residences and offices across the globe.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is under fire after it has emerged that the taxpayer has forked out more than €4.4m to revamp the Ottawa residence of the Irish ambassador to Canada into a state-of-the-art 24,000sq ft “palace” site.

In the Hague a total of €7m went on restoring the ambassador to the Netherlands’ house site and converting another office property there into an embassy building.

Located in the affluent area of Rockcliffe, the Irish ambassador to Canada’s residence was given a 15-month make-over to create a 24,000sq ft, four-storey residence for Ambassador Declan Kelly.

It is more than twice the size of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s official residence.

The original house has now been wrapped in vast new wings, including a huge dining and living room with an upstairs featuring a 2,000sq ft suite and bathroom for the privacy of the ambassador and his wife Anne.

Blueprints for the revamped site show what appear to be eight bedrooms in all and 10 washrooms, plus a pair of powder rooms, a jacuzzi and a sauna. Two staff bedrooms and an employee lounge are perched over the two-car garage toward the back of the residence.

There is also a wine cellar, hobby area, data room, recreation room, study, library, gymnasium with a green padded floor, two kitchens including a commercial-sized operation, a chef’s office, art gallery and what appear to be five fireplaces, including an ornate stone-clad chimney piece in the living room.

The interior flooring is mostly ceramic tile or hard wood and features a 1,500sq ft dining room with a chandelier that is said to have cost €20,000. A less opulent chandelier hangs in the vaulted entrance.

The original 1942 dwelling was described as a “classic fixer-upper”, which had to be gutted down to bare walls with roof beams replaced before the construction workers begin the expansion a year ago in January. Several other houses and apartments have been refurbished at huge cost in recent years, including the refit of the New York apartment of the Irish ambassador to the United Nations. Some €829,000 was used to revamp the property on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, but the €4.4m spent on the Canadian ambassador’s residence in Ottawa is the largest single spend on a diplomat’s house in recent years.

Local residents objected to the major refurbishment, including the cutting down of trees at the site. The dispute was later resolved and during the major redevelopment Mr Kelly lived in temporary accommodation nearby.

Fine Gael’s foreign affairs spokesman Billy Timmins described the refurbishment as “outrageous and insulting” to those bearing the brunt of the recession at home. “How can they justify these huge spends when they have cut special needs teachers and shut hospital wards. It is totally outrageous.”

A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin defended the costs saying that the Ottawa property was “a top-end residence” and the work involved a complete revamp and extensions.

“It also necessitated the addition of a number of security features that are extremely costly,” he said.

He also insisted the work was commissioned before the current economic crisis took hold.

No new development work has been started in recent months. Mr Martin’s department also sanctioned a spend of €7m on the revamp of the ambassador office compound in the Hague in Holland. “The costs relate to both the conversion of a new building, formerly a house, into offices, and the refurbishment of the ambassador’s residence,” said the spokesman.

“The building that houses the new offices had to be totally gutted and rebuilt, including the addition of a new annex that will serve as a passport and consular area.”

The department has also spent €1.4m refurbishing Villa Spada, the embassy to the Holy See in Rome, over the past five years.

Villa Spada, which dates from the 1630s and operates as both the embassy to the Holy See and the ambassador’s residence, was recently valued at €25m.