Visits to Ireland down 23.6% in May

The decline in the number of overseas visitors coming here continued in May, with trips to Ireland down almost a quarter on the same period last year.

The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that some 502,500 people visited Ireland in May, 155,000 (23.6 per cent) fewer than in the same period in 2009.

It represents a similar decline to that experienced while an ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull closed a significant portion of Ireland and the UK's airspace in April.

The numbers visiting from Britain, Ireland's largest tourist market, fell 30 per cent to 214,600, while trips by residents from the rest of Europe and the US decreased by 19.8 per cent and 16.7 per cent respectively.

A total of two million people visited here in the first five months of the year, down from 2.6 million a year earlier.

Irish people are also travelling abroad less. They made 580,900 overseas trips during the month – down 4.8 per cent on May 2009.

Tourism Ireland aid 2010 had been a very difficult year for the tourist industry and that today's figures reflected this fact.

However, it said more than 50 per cent of holidaymakers to arrive in Ireland between July and December and that the industry was out in all its major markets fighting for business and attempting to capitalise on late bookings.

Meanwhile, Minister for Tourism Mary Hanafin today announced the establishment of a group tasked with driving competitiveness, growth and recovery in the tourism industry.

Ms Hanafin will chair the group, which is made up of tourism industry representatives and officials from her department.

"Clearly the very difficult conditions, including economic uncertainty, bad weather and the Icelandic volcanic ash, continued to put pressure on the Irish tourist industry in the first months of 2010," she said.

Fine Gael spokesman on tourism Jimmy Deenihan said Irish tourism was tumbling into a void from which it would be difficult to emerge. He said Ms Hanafin had failed to take significant action to address the decreasing numbers travelling here.