Planning permissions for new homes fell by more then 10 per cent in the first quarter of 2006, according to new information from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The information in the CSO quarterly bulletin shows that permissions for new apartments remained the most robust, falling by just 5.7 per cent, from 6,437 in the first quarter of 2005 to 6,070 in 2006.
In contrast, the number of new houses permitted fell from 18,913 in 2005 to 16,454, a fall of 13 per cent.
One-off houses accounted for 21.7 per cent of all new dwellings. A total of 2,485 new one-off houses were sanctioned in the Border, midlands and western (BMW) region, while 2,413 were sanctioned in the southern and eastern region which includes Dublin.
The county which sanctioned the most permissions for one-off houses in the first quarter of this year was Donegal with 518. It was followed by Cork, excluding the city area, with 508 permissions.
Limerick city had the lowest number at two, followed by Waterford city at six, Galway city at 11 and Cork city at 19.
In regional terms, some 2,881 new dwellings were permitted in the BMW area, while 3,009 were permitted in the southern and eastern region which includes Dublin.
The CSO also revealed statistics relating to port traffic.
They show that Irish ports handled 52.1 million tonnes of goods in 2005, compared with 47.7 million tonnes in 2004. This is an increase of 9.3 per cent.
The number of vessels arriving in 2005 was 16,431 compared with 16,323 in 2004, an increase of just 0.7 per cent.
Dublin Port was the State's busiest, handling 13,494 tonnes. The bulk of it, 8,457 tonnes, arrived from or went to Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
