Irish Ports according to the Central Statistics Office figures released today show that they handled a total of 11.9 million tonnes of goods in the first quarter of the year.

As RTE News reports, this level of goods represented a decrease of 6% when compared with the same time last year.

The CSO’s Statistics of Port Traffic Quarter 1 2023 said that goods forwarded from Irish ports amounted to nearly 4 million tonnes within the first three months of the year.

In this Q1 period, the CSO added that a total of 7.9 million tonnes of goods were received.

As for the total number of commercial vessels that called in Irish ports during the first quarter of 2023, of the seven main ports – Drogheda and Dublin, Rosslare (Leinster) and Bantry, Cork, Shannon and Waterford (Munster) had decreased by 5% compared with Q1 of 2022.

Also amongst the key figures revealed was that Dublin Port had accounted for 63% of all vessel arrivals in Irish ports. In addition the capital port is where 51% of the total tonnage of goods were handled in January, February and March of this year.

Across the border and the Irish Sea is where Great Britain & Northern Ireland had accounted for 37% of the total tonnage of goods handled in the main ports by region of trade.

On mainland continental Europe, countries within the EU had resulted for 42% of the total tonnage of goods handled in seven major ports, the CSO added.