Over ten million passengers were handled by airports in Ireland in the second quarter of this year, according to the official statistics released here on Tuesday.

Central Statistics Office of Ireland (CSO) said that the five main airports in the country handled 10.03 million passengers in the April-June period of this year, up 7.2 percent percent on the same period last year.

According to the CSO 2017 figures, the five main airports handled over 99 percent of the total number of passengers in Ireland last year with the negligible less than one percent to be balanced by other small airports across the country.

Of the total number of passengers handled in the second quarter of this year, Dublin airport accounted by 85.3 percent with the remaining less than 15 percent to be shared among the other four airports in Cork, Shannon, Knock and Kerry, said the CSO.

Almost 72,000 flights were handled by the five main airports in Q2 of 2018, it said, adding that Dublin airport accounted for 83.3 percent of all these flights handled while Cork airport handled 7.6 percent of them.

Nearly nine out of ten passengers on international flights handled by the five main airports in the second quarter of this year were travelling to or from Europe, said the CSO.

The two most popular countries of origin or destination were Britain and Spain, it said.

During the first half of this year, the five main airports handled a total of 16.97 million passengers, up 5.8 percent over a year ago, according to the CSO.

The CSO figures also showed that the five main airports handled nearly 42,000 tons of freight in the second quarter of this year, 93.7 percent of which was international freight.