Chemical exports, which account for more than 40 per cent of the Republic's export trade outside the EU, fell back by 3.4 per cent in the first 10 months of the year.

New figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show chemical products worth €12.4 billion were sold to non-EU entities between January and October.

This compares to €12.9 billion in the same period of 2002, with much of the decline attributable to a fall-off in medical and pharmaceutical trade.

Non-EU exports in this sub-sector are running 24 per cent lower than last year at €2.5 billion, following an annual rise of 69 per cent in 2002.

The drop comes against a backdrop of a generally weakening trend in non-EU trade, with both imports and exports down 5 per cent in the first 10 months of this year.

There was some suggestion of a pick-up in October, however, with seasonally-adjusted CSO data pointing to a 1 per cent rise in non-EU exports when compared to the previous month.

Seasonally adjusted exports were worth €2.58 billion over the month.

Non-EU import trade was, meanwhile, down 11 per cent on September at €1.65 billion on the seasonally-adjusted measure.

Unadjusted numbers show exports fell to €26.6 billion over the first 10 months of the year, while the value of goods imported was close to €15 billion.

A CSO breakdown of the figures shows that the most dramatic moves outside pharmaceuticals came in exports of computers, which weakened by 15 per cent to €4.06 billion, and exports of essential oils, which surged by 96 per cent to €1.4 billion.

The most substantial shift on the import side came in transport equipment, where trade declined by 78 per cent to €300 million as a large aircraft order in 2002 fell out of this year's numbers.