Irish businesses’ online trade accounts for 5.8% of sales in January, CSO finds

Online sales by Irish-registered businesses accounted for just 5.8 per cent of all retail sales in January, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). That was down from 9.7 per cent recorded the previous month and 11 per cent in January 2021.

The figures do not reflect online sales with overseas businesses, such as Amazon, which account for the lion's share of online transactions here. The CSO does not have the legal right to request data from these businesses and, therefore, the total level of retail sales occurring online is not known.

The CSO figures show that, in the pre-pandemic month of December 2019, the proportion of retail sales generated online from Irish-registered businesses was 4.1 per cent, so the latest figure appears to show post-Covid activity returning towards the long-term trend.

In the first three months of 2020, the share of online sales continued at 3.2 per cent in January, 3.5 per cent in February and 4.5 per cent in March, the CSO said.