Irish residents took almost 7.1 million foreign trips last year, according to the Central Statistics Office, an increase of 6% on the 2014 figure.
Visits to the United Kingdom represented almost a third of all trips recorded last year, while Spain was the next most popular destination with almost 1.7 million trips recorded.
Irish residents spent almost 53.48 million bed nights abroad last year – down 2.9% on the 2014 figure. This represented an average duration of around 7.5 nights per trip.
The CSO said that more than €6 billion was spent by Irish residents during these trips, the majority (64.5%) of which was spent on holidays.
The number of domestic trips made by Irish residents also rose in 2015, up 2.4% year-on-year to 7.5 million.
A total of 20.9 million bed nights were recorded during the year, representing an average trip duration of 2.8 nights. Meanwhile more than €1.5 billion was spent as part of these trips.
Just over half (50.7%) of these domestic trips were categorised as holidays, according to the CSO, with €939m of the total spent on domestic travel also falling into this category.
