WHILE the circulation of daily newspapers continued to decline in most industrialised countries last year, Ireland was among that small group to see an increase. Sales were down in 24 of the 38 countries examined by the World Association of Newspapers and the rate of decline was greater than in previous years.

European and North American newspaper sales were the hardest hit, delegates to the annual World Newspaper Congress in Amsterdam were told this week.

While Asia and Latin America experienced the highest growth, the rate of increase was significantly down on 1995.

The director general of FIEJ the acronym for the association, Mr Timothy Balding, reported that newspapers in a majority of countries recorded real increases in advertising revenue and better sales revenue last year, despite circulation decline. At the same time newspapers in 28 countries have lost market share in advertising expenditure to other media since 1993, while in 11 they saw an increase.

Ireland's sales increase was 4.4 per cent. That is, however, still a 6.4 per cent decline over the figures for 1992. That is probably mainly due to the disappearance of the Irish Press titles.

The other countries that experienced growth were Portugal, with 14.3 per cent, Denmark, with 1.1 per cent and the Netherlands, with 0.02 per cent.

Britain showed a decline of 3.8 per cent, and the decline in the US continued, down again by 2.1 per cent.

In Eastern and Central Europe the position of newspaper circulations is uniformly bad, with the Czech Republic showing a massive decline of 36.1 per cent. Only Estonia and Croatia showed small increases.

The Norwegians and the Japanese remain the world's greatest newspaper buyers. The figures show that in Ireland 59 per cent of the population read newspapers, as opposed to buying one. At the top end, 87 per cent of Finns read a daily newspaper, that compares to 85 per cent of Swedes and 84 per cent of Norwegians. In Britain, 76 per cent read a daily newspaper.

Ireland was one of the countries that showed the highest increase in advertising revenue, with a 15.6 per cent rise.

One of the most striking results was a real increase of 35.6 per cent in advertising revenue in China.

In Ireland revenue from newspaper sales increased by 31.4 per cent, whereas in the UK it was down 1.5 per cent and in the US it was down by 0.4 per cent.