Irish residents made over 1.59 million trips abroad in the third quarter of 2003, an increase of 3.6 per cent on 2002, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The CSO's third quarterly Household Travel Survey found that EU destinations accounted for the bulk of international trips during the quarter, with 1,324,000 trips or 83 per cent of total international travel, and 75.8 per cent of bed-nights.
There were 121,000 trips to North America representing an increase of 26 per cent on the same period in 2002.
Spain was the most frequently visited EU destination with 454,000 trips accounting for 34.3 per cent of all trips. Spain also showed the highest year-on-year increase for trips of any EU country at 12.4 per cent.
Trips to North America were up 13.6 per cent in the first nine months of 2003 compared to 7.8 per cent increase in all international trips.
Domestic trips for the same period were 2,087,000, 0.8 per cent higher than the corresponding period in 2002.
The CSO said the number of domestic trips taken in the first nine months of 2003 were 5,043,000 compared to 4,876,000 in the same period of 2002. This represents an increase of 3.4 per cent. The number of holiday trips grew by 3.3 per cent to 2,392,000 in this period.
The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O'Donoghue, today welcomed what he described as "positive figures".
Mr O'Donoghue said: " 2003 started out as a tough year for global tourism. Despite the challenges, figures already released suggest that Ireland has done better than many of its competitors in key markets."
He said: "These new figures suggest that there has also been a good performance in the domestic market. Our performance at home and abroad clearly indicates that Irish tourism continues to be a resilient and robust industry."