Online sales by Irish-registered business accounted for just 6.5 per cent of all retail sales in December, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). That was up marginally on the 6 per cent recorded the previous month.
However, the figures come with a health warning. They do not capture online sales with overseas businesses such as Amazon, which account for the lion's share of online transactions here.
The CSO does not have the legal right to request data from these businesses and therefore the level of retail sales occurring online – because of digitalisation and as a result of Covid-19 – is not known.
The surge in deliveries being made by An Post suggests that online sales in Ireland have soared in recent years.
The CSO data show that in the pre-pandemic month of December 2019, the proportion of retail sales generated online from Irish-registered businesses was 4.1 per cent.
In the first three months of 2020, the share of online sales continued at 3.2 per cent in January, 3.5 per cent in February and 4.5 per cent in March, the CSO said.
Following the first lockdown on March 27th, online sales surged to account for 15.3 per cent of total retail turnover in April 2020.
“There were similar but less dramatic increases in the share of online sales in subsequent lockdowns,” the agency said.
Ireland was placed under Level 5 restrictions for six weeks from October 21st, 2020 and was again placed under Level 5 restrictions on December 31st, 2020. Following these restrictions, the share of online sales was 12.4 per cent in November 2020, 11 per cent in January 2021 and 11.8 per cent in February 2021, it said.
When car sales, fuel and bar sales are excluded, the share of online retail sales in December 2019 was 6.6 per cent. This figure increased to 22.7 per cent of total sales in April 2020 during the first lockdown.
