Complaints that a World Cup advertisement for Budweiser beer was racist because it referred to members of France's national team as frogs have been upheld by the advertising regulating body.
The outdoor poster carried a picture of a lizard and the World Cup trophy, won by France in 1998, with the caption: "The Frogs won last time. Please, not again."
The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland received complaints that the poster was "offensive, racist and insulting to French people".
The authority is a self-regulatory body set up by the advertising industry.
The advertisers involved defended the poster on the grounds that it was an "in-joke" in a long-running campaign featuring "a spoof rivalry between beer-drinking frogs and lizards who sought to outdo one another in their admiration of Budweiser beer."
However, the authority decided that the reference to frogs was meant to refer to the French football team, and the "term was sometimes used in a derogatory manner in relation to French people generally".
It upheld the complaint on the basis that the advertisement breached the Code of Advertising Standards, under which advertisements should not contain anything likely to cause "grave or widespread offence".
The Budweiser poster campaign, which ceased earlier this month, was one of several advertisements concerning the World Cup which attracted complaints to the authority.
A complaint about a television advertisement for Carlsberg beer featuring footage from matches involving Robbie Keane was upheld.
The Code of Advertising Standards states that anyone depicted in alcohol advertisements should be over 25, and Keane is below this age.
A poster campaign for the Evening Herald newspaper featuring a man sitting on a toilet with his trousers down reading the paper's football columnist, John Giles, was also found to be in breach of the code.
Complainants had found the poster to be "crude, vulgar and offensive" and unsuitable to be shown on the sides of buses, according to the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland.