Figures published today show that The Irish Timeshad an average daily readership of 336,000 last year.

This compares with a readership of 535,000 for the Irish Independent.

A change in the methodology of the Joint National Readership Survey (JNRS) means the figures are not directly comparable with previous data.

Until now the JNRS drew a random sample of households from the Electoral Register.

Changes in data protection rules mean that is no longer possible. Instead, the sample has been drawn from the Geo Directory, a database which is representative of the Irish population.

The Geo Directory allows the JNRS to reach people who may not, for various reasons, be on the Electoral Register, such as students living away from home.

The readership for The Irish Timesis unchanged from the 2005 figure calculated under the old system.

The number recorded as reading the Irish Independentis 40,000 below the 575,000 recorded last year.

Apart from The Irish Times, the readership figures for all other daily newspapers were lower under the new methodology.

The Irish Examinerrecorded readership of 249,000 last year.

More than three million people, or 89 per cent of the population, reads some newspaper during the week, according to the latest figures. Of those, 1.83 million or 53.7 per cent read a daily paper.

The report shows that younger people have not abandoned the newspaper market.

The JNRS data show that 86 per cent of people under the age of 25 are regular newspaper readers.

Among the "red-top" tabloid market, the Irish Daily Starhas 401,000 readers, the Irish Sun251,000 and the Irish Daily Mirror176,000.

In the Sunday market, the Sunday Independenthas the strongest readership with 1,056,000 readers followed by the Sunday Worldat 796,000 and the Irish News of the Worldat 504,000.

The Sunday Timeshas 381,000 readers according to the latest JNRS figures.

Almost 2.5 million people, 73.4 per cent of the population, reads a Sunday newspaper, according to the survey.

The Evening Heraldhad 299,000 readers last year while the Farmer's Journalreadership was 251,000.

A total of 364,000 people read The Irish Times Magazineweekly last year. The JNRS figures measures readership among the population over the age of 15.

The move to a new system of sampling readership means that direct year-on-year comparison of readership trends will not be possible until August 2008.