Irish tourists spent more money abroad than foreign visitors to Ireland for the second quarter in a row.

Money spent by Irish visitors overseas exceeded tourism revenue by €9 million in the last three months of 2002, but the deficit was lower than the €72 million recorded in the peak July to September season.

Figures released yesterday by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that the number of visitors to Ireland from October to December last year increased by 2.5 per cent on the same period in 2001.

The CSO said there were 1,286,000 overseas visitors to Ireland during the quarter compared with 1,255,000 in the same period in 2001.

Visitor traffic from the United States grew by 14 per cent on the same quarter in 2001 while traffic from continental Europe grew by 10.7 per cent.

The majority of those travellers - 801,000 - came from Great Britain, followed by continental Europe and the United States and Canada. There were 559,000 visits in the holiday/leisure/ recreation category, an increase of about 7 per cent on the same period in 2001.

Tourism Ireland said yesterday that it had seen a dip in tourist enquiries from Great Britain over the past two weeks as the prospect of war in the Gulf increased.

However, it said it would be monitoring the situation over the coming months and would continue to formulate strategies to market Ireland over that period of time.

"As the impact of the Iraq war unfolds over the coming weeks we will continue to carefully monitor, assess and review the marketplace and then revise our plans so that we can ensure are marketing budgets are spent to best effect for the tourism industry in Ireland," said Mr Paul O'Toole, chief executive of Tourism Ireland.