Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

The CSO introduced a new monthly release on overseas travel in January 2004. This release gives summary monthly figures in addition to the CSO's more detailed quarterly figures on tourism. The monthly release shows the total number of overseas trips into and out of the Republic of Ireland classified by area of residence.

The latest figures available are for December 2004. They show that there were slightly more than 436,000 overseas trips to Ireland in that month, an increase of 8.9% on the number in December 2003. In 2004 there were almost 6.6 million overseas trips to Ireland, an increase of 3.2% on 2003. It is expected that the January 2005 release will be published before the end of April.

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