New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that for the whole of 2022, a total of 17,257,000 passengers arrived in Ireland from overseas destinations.
The CSO said this represented a very substantial increase compared with 2021 when only 4,955,900 passengers arrived in Ireland.
But passenger arrivals in 2022 still remain significantly lower - 14.3% - than pre-pandemic 2019, when a total of 20,143,700 passengers arrived into the country.
Today's CSO figures also show that passenger arrivals in December of last year were still slightly below pre-Covid levels in December 2019.
A total of 1,309,500 passengers arrived in Ireland on overseas routes in December last year, a substantial increase on December 2021, when 692,900 passengers arrived on overseas routes.
The increase is even more substantial when compared with December 2020 when just 164,400 passengers arrived on these routes, the CSO said.
But passenger arrivals remain 4.6% lower than pre-pandemic December 2019, when a total of 1,372,600 passengers arrived on overseas routes, it added.
The CSO said the recovery in passenger numbers is seen in both air and sea travel, although the recovery in air travel is most pronounced, increasing by 92.8% in December last year compared with December 2021.
Today's figures also show that the recovery is also spread across all major routes, with transatlantic traffic up most.
The CSO noted there were more than two passengers arriving on transatlantic routes in December 2022 for every one passenger in December 2021.
Among the continental routes, Spanish routes remain the busiest, with 117,800 passengers arriving on these routes, up 69.7% compared with December 2021.
But Great Britain remained the most important departure country for overseas travel to Ireland, with 550,600 passengers arriving on air and sea routes from there, compared with just 285,400 the same month the previous year.
