New figures from the Central Statistics Office show an increase in international travel during the months of April, May, and June of this year.
The CSO said that passengers travelling to and from Ireland were up by 3% in the second quarter of 2023 when compared with the same time in 2019, while they were 18% higher compared with the second quarter of 2022.
Today's figures reveal that almost 804,000 more passengers travelled to Ireland in the second quarter of 2023 when compared with the same time last year.
This also marked an increase of 158,000 passengers when compared with the same three month period in 2019.
A total of 5.4 million passengers departed from Ireland in the second quarter - an increase of 804,000 on the same time last year, and 105,000 more people when compared with the second quarter of 2019.
The CSO noted that the number of flights to and from Irish airports increased in the second quarter of 2023 by 7,580 flights on 2022. But there were 287 fewer flights when compared with the same period in 2019.
Today's figures also show that almost 74,000 flights were handled by the country's five main airports- Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry - in the three month period under review.
Dublin Airport handled 83% of all the flights, while Cork accounted for 7% of them.
The CSO said that London-Heathrow, London-Gatwick, and Amsterdam-Schiphol were the most popular routes for passengers travelling through Dublin airport in the second quarter of 2023.
The top route for Cork and Shannon was London-Heathrow, while the busiest route for Knock was London-Stansted, and the most popular route for passengers using Kerry airport was Dublin.
Meanwhile, the amount of air freight handled by the main airports increased by 7% to 42,402 tonnes in the third quarter when compared with the same time last year.
Looking at the figures for the first half of 2023, the CSO said that 18.4 million passengers passed through Irish airports. This marked an increase of 4.5 million passengers when compared with the same period in 2022, and 450,000 more than the same six-month period in 2019.
