Foreign visitor numbers down 0.6%

There were 2,173,000 overseas visits to Ireland in the third quarter of 2004,compared with 2,187,000 in the same period last year, a decrease of 0.6%, says the Central Statistics Office.

The number of visits to Ireland by residents of Great Britain fell by 3.6% on the same quarter of 2003, while the number of visits by residents of other European countries grew by 1.6%. Visits by residents of the USA and Canada grew by 2.8% on the third quarter of 2003.