Car sales are up 19% over the first seven months of the year.
With 131,000 new registrations between January and July, the total for the year to date has now surpassed the figure for the whole of 2015.
Director of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry Alan Nolan said car sales have recovered significantly since the financial crash.
He said: “If we put it into context back in 2007 we had 188000 new cars sold in the year, but by 2009 we had sold 57,000, so an absolute collapse.
“And it’s been building really since 2013... so it’s been moving back to normal year sales.”
On finance, Mr Nolan said there has been a noticeable increase in the availability of car finance, allowing people who had held on to older cars for longer to more easily upgrade.
He said 7%-8% of vehicles on the road each year should be replaced to combat issues such as safety and environmental concerns.
He said medium-term consumer confidence is important with regard to buying a new car.
The cost-saving benefits of buying new are now coming to the fore, according to Mr Nolan.
He said: “It’s probably 25% cheaper for a new car now than it was in 2008. Road tax is cheaper with newer cars, fuel consumption is cheaper and fuel costs are down.
“Certainly there is a way to finance it, provided you are able to make that step,” he added.
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MORNING BRIEFS - British retailer Next says trading is very volatile and consumer demand difficult to predict but it's more concerned at present about the weather than about Brexit.
Since the referendum result, it says in a trading statement this morning, it can see no evidence of any appreciable effect on consumer behaviour.
One effect it is flagging, though, is the impact of the sterling devaluation which will mean its costs rise, it says, though by less than 5%.
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JPMorgan has settled a class action suit in the US over a pre-paid debit card used by former prison inmates who complained about the onerous terms and conditions attached to the product.
The bank won a tender to supply pre-paid debit cards to ex-convicts on the basis that it would provide them with a straightforward way to access money they had earned while working in prison.
But charges attached to the cards, about which the former inmates were neither informed nor given an opportunity to review, included a $10 fee to withdraw cash from an ATM and a 45 cent charge simply to check an account balance - both services available to other JPMorgan customers for free.
The bank has paid almost three quarters of a million dollars in compensation and legal fees to settle the case.
