Irish ports see reduction in volume of goods passing through
The volume of goods going through Ireland's ports between April and June this year fell in comparison with the same period last year, according to the Central Statistics Office.
The seven main Irish ports - Dublin, Cork, Rosslare, Drogheda, Shannon Foynes, Waterford and Bantry Bay - handled 12.3 million tonnes of goods in the three months.
This is a decrease of 7.5% compared with the same three months of 2018.
Exports from these ports amounted to 4.3 million tonnes, an almost 9% fall on the same period last year, while there were 8 million tonnes of imports, a 6.7% decrease on the three months in 2018.
Two traffic categories in Q2 2019 saw quarterly percentage increases - Lo-lo traffic (+7.6%) and Break bulk goods (+12.4%).
The results also show that the number of vessels arriving during the three months fell by 118 (-3.5%), while the gross tonnage of all arriving vessels went down by 3.3% to 68,503 thousand tonnes.
Dublin port accounted for 63.9% of all vessel arrivals in Irish ports and just over half (53.7%) of the total tonnage of goods handled in Q2 2019.
Great Britain and Northern Ireland accounted for 40.3% of the total tonnage of goods handled in the main ports by region of trade in Q2 2019, and other EU countries accounted for a similar percentage of trade (39.7%).
Irish ports handled 755,000 passengers in Q2 2019, a decrease of 0.8% compared with the same period in 2018. In the second quarter of 2019, Dublin port accounted for 73.2% of all passenger journeys.
