The latest figures show that car sales continued to strengthen in July, as the scrappage scheme continued to provide a boost to the industry.
The Central Statistics Office said just over 7,000 new cars were licensed in the month, an increase of more than 61% compared with July last year.
For the first seven months of this year, 68,379 new cars have been sold, an increase of 47% on the 46,720 recorded in the same period last year. This is roughly in line with figures released by the motor industry earlier this month.
The seven-month figure is still well below the corresponding figure for 2008, however, when more than 130,000 new cars were licensed.
A breakdown of the CSO's July figures show that of the 7,018 new private cars licensed, 27.7% were petrol and 69.1% were diesel. Volkswagen led the way with 911 cars, followed by Opel (898), Ford (774) and Toyota (687).
But there was much slower growth in other areas, with sales of new goods vehicles up just 3.8% from July last year to 871.
