The number of overseas trips to Ireland rose by 7.2% to over 2.1m during the last three months of 2016, when compared with the same period in 2015.
New figures from the Central Statistics Office also show the number of nights spent here by overseas visitors year-on-year in Q4 was 7.5% higher at 13.8m, with the average stay lasting 6.4 nights.
Between Q4 2015 and the same period last year, spending by visitors to Ireland rose by 7.5% to €1.23 billion.
Meanwhile, the number of trips made by Irish residents overseas between October and December increased by 10% from in Q4 2015 to 1.7m.
Across the whole of last year, over 9.5 million trips were made to Ireland by overseas visitors –representing an increase of 10.9% on 2015 – with more than €6 billion spent here.
Irish residents made 7.4m trips overseas in 2016, which was up 6.3% on the previous year.
Tourism Ireland has welcomed both the growth in spend by overseas visitors and in holiday visitors last year.
The organisation's CEO Niall Gibbons said: “Our focus now is very much on 2017. Our aim is to grow overseas tourism revenue this year by +4.5%, to €5.7 billion, for the island of Ireland.
"Our promotions received a tremendous boost last week, with our Global Greening initiative for St Patrick’s Day, which was bigger and better than ever before.
"St Patrick’s Day traditionally marks the real start of the tourism season for us and we took every opportunity to capitalise on Ireland’s heightened profile."
