Visits from Britain show fall of 17 per cent

Visits to Ireland from Britain dropped by over 17 per cent during September 2008, according to figures released today.

Overall, overseas trips to Ireland dropped by 10.8 per cent to 690,700 for September this year. The fall in visitor numbers from Great Britain - to 318,600 in September this compared to 384,400 in for the same month in 2007 - accounted for much of this fall.

Trips from Other Europe and North America also dropped but to a lesser extent.

Irish residents made 726,300 overseas trips in September 2008 which was down very slightly from September 2007. This trend contrasted with a rise of 14.5 per cent in September 2007 compared to the same month the year earlier.

Over the first nine months of this year, the number of overseas trips by Irish residents grew by 4.4 per cent to 6,241,600 compared to the same period in 2007. This was slightly more than the number of trips taken to Ireland which fell by just over 1 per cent to 6,174,000.

The CSO “Airport Pairings” database contains information relating to every direct flight in and out of the nine Irish airports on a monthly basis. Data is available from January 2006 to April 2008.