THERE WAS A decrease of 40 per cent in the amount of new cars licensed in Ireland last month.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the figures relating to the number of vehicles licensed for the first time in October 2011 today.

They show that there were 2,216 new private cars licensed last month – compared with 3,742 licensed in October 2010.

That represents a decrease of 40.8 per cent.

When it comes to new goods vehicles, 645 were licenced last month, compared with 711 in October 2010, which is a decrease of 9.3 per cent.

There were 7,678 vehicles licenced last month – compared with 8,698, which was a further decrease of 11.7 per cent.

When it came to the types of new private cars licensed, the vast majority (71.4 per cent) were diesel while 25.8 per cent were petrol.

Volkswagen made the most popular new cars, with 307 bought by drivers, followed by Opel (278), Toyota (269) and Renault (233).

It turns out that more people have been buying new cars in the past two years compared to 2009 – so far this year, 84, 937 new private cars have been licensed, an increase on 82,114 in 2010 and a further increase on 53,010 in 2009.