More than 22.7 million passengers travelled through the Republic’s three biggest airports in 2011, a rise of 1 per cent on the previous year. New figures from the Dublin Airport Authority show an extra 100,000 passengers last year.
The rise in traffic at Dublin, Cork and Shannon was largely due to an increase in people taking international flights. Domestic traffic contracted further last year with passenger numbers falling from a peak of 1.5 million in 2005 to 200,000.