Guinness Storehouse still most popular tourist attraction in Ireland

The Guinness Storehouse remains Ireland's most popular tourist attraction, welcoming over 1.6 million visitors last year.

New figures from Fáilte Ireland show visitors to the Dublin brewery increased by 10% on 2015.

The Cliffs of Moher Visitor Experience and Dublin Zoo both also registered very strong performances last year with the cliffs enjoying a particularly significant jump in business.

The National Aquatic Centre also welcomed more than one million visitors last year, a 4.5% increase, with the Book of Kells named as the fifth most popular attraction, with 890,781 visitors.

Amongst Irelands ‘free to enter’ attractions, the National Gallery of Ireland continues to lead the way with numbers up 5% to over 755,000.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art, National Botanic Gardens, Doneraile Wildlife Park and National Museum of Ireland.

Commenting on today’s figures, Paul Kelly, CEO of Fáilte Ireland, said: "Our visitor attractions are a great barometer for tourism activity and the growth across most attractions reflects a record tourism year.

"This growth can be even stronger if we all work together to unlock the further potential of our natural landscapes and built heritage. If we take a site such as the spectacular sea cliffs at Sliabh Liag, it has a similar appeal as the Cliffs of Moher – yet the latter receives eight times as many visitors.

"This is just one example of the many of our attractions and natural assets which have the potential to generate even more visitors, revenue and jobs for local communities.

"Failte Ireland is committed to work with all parties to realise the full potential of these visitor attractions, we work in strong partnership with local authorities and communities, Coillte, the OPW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service amongst others to achieve this.

"Together we need to do more and move faster on this agenda and we call on all those who want to grow their local tourism sector to work with us to deal with the obstacles and grasp the opportunities which are available.

"Attractions are one of the key reasons why many overseas visitors choose Ireland as a destination – they create the variety of experiences that make for an enjoyable holiday and are the basis of visitor memories and moments to share that are critical to the growth of tourism in Ireland.

"Failte Ireland is committed to investing in our current stock of attractions and developing new ones and our future investment in this regard will be shaped to reap growth in lesser visited regions with great potential as well as investing in those experiences which can generate visitor traffic beyond the high season.

"This will help us to generate revenue and jobs all around the country and all year round."