The new JNRR (Joint National Readership Research) figures will give Ireland on Sunday more than enough ammunition to convince the sceptics that its shift to a tabloid shape is not a last ditch effort to save the title.
In the survey, which covers the period between July 1998 and June 1999, the paper gained 30,000 readers, bringing its readership up to 168,000, an increase of 21.7 per cent on the previous 12 months.
All other indigenous Irish Sundays were shown to have lost readers during the same period.
The suspicion surrounding the shift from broadsheet to tabloid comes from the days of the Irish Press, when the paper went tabloid some years before the company went under.
Ireland on Sunday's managing director, Mr Ashley Balbirnie, has heard the comparison before.
"The Press group went under for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with the shape of the paper," says Mr Balbirnie.
He also rejects the suggestion that going tabloid means dumbing down, saying the paper's editorial content will be broadly the same as it has been since its arrival two years ago.
It will have more extensive lifestyle coverage in its new magazine section, Life. Mr Balbirnie is naturally pleased with the new readership figures and they are in line with the as yet unaudited ABC figures.
He believes his paper is taking most of its new readers from the Sunday Independent.
The shift to a mid-market tabloid is, according to Mr Balbirnie, a readership-building initiative, as the paper's own research showed that broadsheet readers will pick up a tabloid but the reverse is not true.
"We realised we were alienating a whole segment of the market," he says.
That Irish tabloid buying market is growing, as shown in JNRR. The Star showed a readership increase of 13 per cent, the highest rate of increase of any Irish daily.
A £400,000 (€508,259) advertising campaign created by David Kelly to support the redesign has already begun. The most striking feature of the mostly animated television ad is the sneak preview of the paper itself, which shows just how similar it is in appearance to the Mail on Sunday.
While acknowledging the similarities, Mr Balbirnie says the new look Ireland on Sunday will not be a "me too product". But the redesign will have to work hard. Despite the increase in readers, Ireland on Sunday still has a great deal of ground to make up.
The Sunday Independent, with its 1,103,000 readers, remains by far the most popular indigenous Sunday, with the Sunday World in second place at 975,000 readers.
