Elan and Ryanair were the strongest performers in what was a lacklustre session, as US and UK markets remained closed for public holidays.
"Whenever London is closed it casts a sort of shadow over market volumes across Europe," one Dublin-based broker said. "It was a very, very quiet day in trading rooms around Dublin."
The heaviest action was seen in Bank of Ireland, with large volumes of nil-paid rights trading hands. The nil-paids were under pressure for most of the day, and against this backdrop the bank's ordinary share price suffered and was down almost 3 per cent at 71.5 cent at the close.
Cement stock CRH softened slightly, albeit on less than 30 per cent of its normal volume. It lost more than 1 per cent to finish at €18.00. One broker warned against reading too much into price moves on the Irish market today, as volumes were so light.
Nonetheless, as CRH has a 30 per cent weighting in the Iseq, this fall proved the greatest negative drag on the index yesterday.
Offsetting this downward pressure were Elan, Ryanair and Kerry which together account for about 25 per cent of the index weighting.
Biotech group Elan gained more than 4 per cent, almost 19 cent, to finish above €4.76, on low volume.
Ryanair was strong ahead of what one broker described as "fairly eagerly anticipated" results due out today. The low-fares airline traded as high as €3.45 at one point. It closed at €3.38, which represented a gain on the day of almost 3 per cent, or 9 cent.
Food stock Kerry Group was in demand, and traded up 1.5 per cent, about 33 cent, to €22.58.
Overall the Iseq index closed up about 9 points at 2,947.70.
National benchmark indexes rose in 9 of the 17 western European markets that were open today. Germany's DAX gained 0.3 per cent while France's CAC 40 dropped 0.2 per cent.
Spain's benchmark IBEX 35 dropped 0.7 per cent, extending this month's slump to 11 percent.
Additional reporting - Bloomberg