Dublin, Jun 1 (IANS): Overseas travel to Ireland continued to recover in the February-April period of this year, figures released by the country's Central Statistics Office (CSO) revealed.

In April, a total of 69,400 passengers arrived in Ireland from overseas, up 13 per cent from 61,400 in March and up nearly 27 per cent from 54,800 in February, Xinhua news agency reported citing the CSO as saying on Monday.

Compared with April 2020 when the country was hit hardest by the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the April 2021 figures for overseas passenger arrivals represented a 331 per cent increase.

The CSO figures also showed that in April 2021, nearly 89 per cent of international travellers arrived in Ireland by air, with the remaining people arriving in the country by sea.

Of all the overseas passengers arriving in Ireland in April, 21,600 persons or 31 per cent of them came from the UK, excluding Northern Ireland, followed by the Netherlands, Spain and Poland.

In the first four months of this year, the number of international passenger arrivals in Ireland totaled 293,700, down nearly 91 per cent year on year.

"This illustrates the ongoing dramatic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on international travel to Ireland," said Gregg Patrick, a statistician with the CSO.

The Irish government recently announced that starting from July 19, it will start operating the European Union (EU) Digital COVID Certificate for travel within the bloc and the European Economic Area, if the public health situation at the time permits.

More than 2.6 million doses of Covid vaccines had been administered in Ireland.