€3bn in Chinese goods imported

Almost €11m worth of perfume and essential oils and €6m of leather goods, including “dressed furskins”, are just some of the €3bn of goods imported from China into Ireland last year.

And while construction is floundering, prefabricated properties appear to be booming, with €38m worth brought in from the Asian country in 2012.

Unsurprisingly, electrical goods represented almost a third of the imports. That was broken down into office machines and automatic data processing machines (€595m); telecommunications and sound equipment (€285m); and electrical machinery, apparatus, and appliances (€216m).