New car registrations up 26% in year

The number of new cars licensed in the first six months of the year is up by more than 26% on 2014.

In all, 78,660 cars were licensed from the beginning of January to the end of June, and registrations were up in every single month.

There was a drop of over 10% in imported used cars during the same period.

According to the CSO, the most popular makes of new private cars licensed were Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford, Nissan and Hyundai, together accounting for over half of all new registrations.

Seven in every ten private cars licensed were diesel.