For the first three months of this year, residents here made 1.72 million trips overseas compared with 1.76 million trips in the first quarter of 2008. In March alone, there were 634,000 overseas trips - a rise of 13.5pc from a year ago. Those buoyant numbers were reflected in Ryanair passenger data for March that showed numbers rose 9pc to 10.9 million overall. The data showed that overall tourist numbers rose 3.3pc from March 2018 to 784,700 even as the number of British tourists fell by 3.1pc to 284,300 while trips from other European countries rose by 7.3pc to 289,500. A 10.7pc surge in visitor numbers from the United States and Canada to 175,200 more than offset the lower numbers from the UK as an additional 17,000 visitors from North America came here versus 9,000 fewer Britons.

Source: Irish Independent April 26, 2019 01:30 UTC