Flood report is a bestseller as nearly 25,000 sold

Critically acclaimed for his punchy writing style and accessibility, Mr Justice Feargus Flood has recently gained a reputation in publishing of which even Maeve Binchy would be proud.

And now he has the sales figures to match. All but a "couple of hundred" of the 25,000 copies of his interim report printed last week have now been sold, a figure which would have put the publication - if it were a commercial entity - at the top of the bestsellers' list.

Industry sources noted an exceptional book might sell up to 10,000 copies in its first, and inevitably best, week. Binchy's latest collection of stories, Quentins, which was Ireland's number one bestseller in four of the past six weeks, has sold around 20,000 copies to date - fewer than the Flood report in nine days.

The Binchy figure, according to Mr Adrian White, a buyer for Easons, is a "rough estimate", based on the records of Ireland's main booksellers.

Tracking systems, he noted, are not as well-developed here as in the UK. Moreover, he remarked: "You're not comparing like with like. One thing is price.

"Flood has been priced at an artificially low level. I think if it cost €15, which would be the ball-park for other bestsellers, you would not be selling as many."

Mr Justice Flood priced the report at just €1 despite the fact that each copy costs up to €12 to print. The tribunal is paying for the difference, although its costs will ultimately be absorbed by the Department of the Environment and Local Government.

A spokeswoman for the Government Publications Office said only a couple of hundred copies were left in its shop on Molesworth Street, Dublin, which will reopen this morning.

The office had received more than 4,000 postal orders from bookshops and individuals throughout the State and these had now been dealt with, she said, adding no fresh print run was planned.

An additional 2,000 CD Roms containing the report have also been sold, and more than 40,000 downloads have been made from the Flood tribunal's website.

The spokeswoman noted that when downloads from other websites, including ireland.com, were taken into account "we may be looking at about 100,000 copies out there".

That would bring the report close to another great publishing phenomenon of recent times - Roy Keane's autobiography.

The Flood tribunal interim report can still be downloaded from the Irish Times website ireland.com