New car sales down 7% on 2018

Since January, 73,781 new private cars have been sold in Ireland, a decrease of 7% on the same time last year.

Just over 9,100 new cars were licensed last month - a 2.5% drop compared to May 2018.

The most popular makes of new cars sold in Ireland are;

• Volkswagen (1,141)
• Toyota (1,015)
• Renault (674)
• Opel (668)
• Ford (610)

The top five car makes represent just 45% of all new cars sold in May 2019.

Only 47% of those cars sold in 2019 were diesel, down from 55.5% last year.

There were just over 1,800 new electric cars licensed between January and May of this year, compared to 490 in 2018.