A Tipperary TD has called on the government and the Opposition to “stop fighting like children in the Dáil” and deal with the urgent issues facing the country as new figures from the CSO reveal a 30% fall in foreign visitors to Ireland in February 2025 compared to a year previously – with a similar decline in spending.
The CSO said that the results show that the decrease represents an acceleration of the downward year-on-year trend in foreign visitor numbers that first emerged in September 2024.
Some 304,300 foreign visitors completed a trip to Ireland in February 2025, a decrease of 30% compared with February 2024, the CSO said.
Spending is also significantly down, with visitors spent €196 million on their trips (excluding fares), down 31% compared with February 2024, the statistics agency revealed.
The visitors stayed a total of 1.8 million nights in the country, a drop of 33% when compared with February 2024 – and the average length of stay for foreign resident overnight visitors was 5.9 nights, down from an average of 6.2 nights in that same period.
The most frequent reason given for travelling to Ireland was to visit family or friends (37%) – while the largest contingent of visitors came from Great Britain (49%), and the second largest came from the United States (10%).
Speaking to Gript from Tipperary, Independent TD Mattie McGrath said that he believed a key reason for the decline was because of the “utter madness” of “tying so many of our hotels and guesthouses up as asylum centres”.
“Much of it is a simple case supply and demand,” he said. “Fewer available rooms means upward pressure on prices, and tourists can’t afford to pay those steep prices. Also, many of the tourist accommodation and service providers are also hard-pressed to pay for overheads, with the cost of energy still being a huge problem driving up prices.”
“The Céad Míle Fáílte is dying fast, and Irish tourism is in near-collapse,” he said. “The sheer stupidity of the polices of this government and the one before it have directly led to this hugely damaging fall. 30% is an enormous drop, but when are we going to see action on it? Instead, we have the Department looking at turning the only hotel in Carna – a beautiful gaeltacht area – into an IPAS centre.”
He said that February was typically a month where business improved, but “the visitors aren’t coming and shopkeepers and small businesses are telling me that things are not picking up, they are seriously worried.”
“Instead of focusing on these issues, we have the government and Opposition fighting like children in the Dáil,” the Independent TD added. “The hard-working people in our tourism industry deserve better than this.”
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Commenting on the release, Gregg Patrick, Statistician in the Tourism and Travel Division for the CSO said:
“The results show that 304,300 foreign visitors departed Ireland on overseas routes in February 2025, a decrease of 30% compared with February 2024. This decrease represents an acceleration of the downward year-on-year trend in foreign visitor numbers that first emerged in September 2024.
The visitors’ expenditure in Ireland (excluding fares) was €196 million, a decrease of 31% compared with February 2024. However, the mean expenditure per visitor decreased by just 1.8% to €643.
In terms of revenue generated, the most important tourism markets were both Continental Europe (36%) and Great Britain (36%). These were followed by North America (18%), and the Rest of the World (10%).