Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Up to 2020, the CSO employed two survey instruments at airports and seaports to compile statistics on overseas visitors to Ireland. These were the Country of Residence Survey (CRS) and Passenger Card Inquiry (PCI). The former differentiated air and sea passengers into outbound Irish residents and inbound foreign residents. The latter collected additional details from passengers, including the purpose of their visit and their estimated expenditure.

The number of overseas visitors in 2018 and 2019, broken down by area of residence, is presented in table 1 below. For example, table 1 shows that there were 10.6 million overseas visitors in 2018 and 10.8 million overseas visitors in 2019. More visitors came from Great Britain (3.8 million in both years) than from any other area of residence.

The estimated revenue generated by the overseas visitors in 2018 and 2019 is presented in table 2 below. The revenue is estimated by first excluding fares (air and sea) from the visitors declared trip expenditures (item (1) in the table below). The fare receipts of Irish carriers (airlines and ferry operators) are then added to the revenue (item (2) in the table below). This creates an estimate of the total tourism and travel earnings (items (1) and (2)). The total tourism and travel earnings estimated for each of the years 2018 and 2019 were €6.9 billion. Visitors from the USA & Canada contributed most to these earnings, contributing €1.7 billion each year (excluding fares).

In March 2020, survey operations at airports and seaports were suspended due to the public health restrictions in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, no data were collected on the residencies or expenditure of overseas visitors to Ireland for that period.

In 2023 the CSO resumed full-scale survey operations at airports and seaports again with a new survey methodology for collecting data on overseas visitors. Monthly data for the period June to December 2023 is available on the CSO’s website. Annual results for 2023 will be published in March 2024.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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2. To ask the Taoiseach to provide details on Ireland’s annual drowning rate; the way this compares with other countries in Europe; and to provide a breakdown of drowning rates by county. [5178/24]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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The Central Statistics Office (CSO) produces statistics relating to deaths which are compiled from administrative data supplied to the organisation from the General Register Office (GRO). The narrative contained within these death certificates are analysed and utilising methodological guidelines as prescribed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), each death is assigned an underlying cause of death which is coded to the International Classification of Diseases 10^thRevision (ICD-10).

The CSO publishes detailed statistics relating to the underlying cause of death (UCOD) and disseminates them through their website. The most recent annual report data is available for 2021 and is based off year of death. Table 1 below provides a breakdown of the various underlying cause of death codes which reference drowning.

While the CSO publishes certain underlying cause of death figures at different geographical levels, given the low number of deaths for certain manner of deaths, the figures in the Table 1 above been grouped together for confidentiality reasons so to provide a county level breakdown as shown in Table 2.

Finally, Eurostat is the European statistical office who collate and centrally disseminate data at a European level. Data for 2021 is available through their website and statistics are available for deaths relating to Accidental Drowning and submersion (ICD-10 groupings W65 to W74), of which there were a total of 57 in Ireland in 2021. Table 3 below provides the actual number of deaths for these ICD-10 groupings and is amalgamated with population data to provide crude deaths of accidental drowning and submersion per 100,000 of population where data is available.