New car sales for the first three months of the year were 47,996, up 14 per cent on the first quarter last year.
New registrations in March were up 5.75 per cent at 14,426, according to figures from the Society for the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).
Toyota remains the top-selling car brand, with 14.5 per cent of the market so far this year, while its Avensis model is the best-selling car for 2011 with 2,211 registrations, taking the lead over the Volkswagen Golf by 170 sales.
VW is the second most popular car brand with 11.8 per cent, followed by Ford on 11 per cent, Renault on 9.4 per cent and Nissan with 7.8 per cent.
The move towards low emissions cars continues with 90 per cent of the new cars sold this year having emissions of less than 141g/km, thereby falling into the two lowest tax bands where road tax is either €104 or €156. Of the 47,996 new cars registered this year, just 4,678 fell into the higher tax bands.
Diesel models accounted for 70.8 per cent of all sales, a stark contrast to the year before the change to the emissions-based tax regime: in 2007 petrol sales made up 72.5 per cent of registrations.
However, despite the publicity surrounding electric cars, not one has been registered so far this year, while hybrid sales have fallen by 31 per cent to just 242 new cars sold in the first three months of this year.
Despite the continued growth, Shane Teskey, managing director of Motorcheck.ie, says a lack of car finance is having a knock-on effect in the industry. "It has been a very difficult year for the leasing industry in particular," said Mr Teskey.
"A lack of finance facilities for contract hire has meant that smaller leasing companies are unable to fulfil actual orders on their books.
"Until this is addressed new car registrations for both private consumers and business customers will continue to be seriously hampered,” he said.