Irish people are making more overseas trips and more foreign tourists are visiting Ireland from abroad than ever before, figures released by the Central Statistics Office today show.
According to the CSO, 677,800 Irish people went abroad last June. This is an increase of 64,900 over the same month last year and over 122,000 more than in June 2004.
The figures also show there were some 750,500 trips to Ireland from overseas in June 2006, a jump of over 68,300 from the 682,200 visitors who arrived in Ireland for the same period 12 months ago.
The number of visitors from Britain, the US and Europe all grew in the past year.
Nearly half of all visitors to Ireland came from Britain, while 224,900 came from other European countries and 141,400 came from the US. There were 36,700 journeys into Ireland from other countries last June.
In total, there were 3,172,200 trips abroad by Irish people in the first six months of this year. There were 3,501,900 trips to Ireland in the same period.