THE Irish Times received a special award for newspaper sales performance at the Newspaper Society's annual sales conference in Brighton. The award marks a departure for the Newspaper Society whose sales awards, traditionally, are reserved for British newspapers.

The trophy, presented by the president of the society Mr Robin Burgess, was in recognition of sales increases achieved over recent years. Since 1993, sales of the newspaper have climbed by 11.4 per cent to an all-time high of more than 102,000 copies a day. Last year alone, sales rose by 5 per cent.

The award for best circulation growth among UK newspapers only went to the Irish News.