Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

The Central Statistics Office estimates the number of overseas visitors to Ireland using actual passenger numbers supplied by the airport authorities and shipping companies combined with a large-scale sample survey conducted in Irish airports and seaports. The country of residence survey is a continuous large-scale sample survey where incoming and departing passengers are interviewed. This provides country of residence breakdowns for passengers which are applied to the total passenger numbers, giving estimates of overseas visitors to Ireland as well as Irish visits abroad.

The survey was redesigned in 2005 in line with international best practice. The sample size of the country of residence survey in 2006 was slightly more than 665,500 passengers, equating to an overall sampling fraction of more than 2% of all passengers. The most recent results from the overseas travel release to the end of December 2007 showed trips to Ireland totalled 8,012,200 compared to 7,709,000 in the same period in 2006, an increase of 3.9%.

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