Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that the bad weather conditions at the start of the year led to a record drop in the number of people travelling to Ireland.
Overseas visitors made 313,000 trips to Ireland in January, a fall of more than 110,000 or 26% from the same month last year. The CSO said this was the biggest percentage fall since it began recording these figures in 2000.
There were dramatic drops in the number of people travelling from Britain (31.6%) and the rest of Europe (29.7%). Visits from North America were down just over 2% from a year earlier. The CSO said almost 66,000 fewer people from Britain came here in January compared with January 2009.
CSO figures earlier this year showed that the number of people travelling to Ireland last year was the lowest since 2005.
Tourism Ireland chief executive Niall Gibbons said the first quarter of 2010 had been extremely difficult, but said January accounted for only around 6% of total visits each year.
He said the extreme weather conditions experienced in Britain and across mainland Europe at the beginning of the year had affected the figures.
Meanwhile, the number of Irish people travelling abroad in January was down 10.6% to 448,900.
