New car sales continue to surge

New car sales for the month of July (27,633) were up 48 per cent compared to the same month last year, according to figures just released by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).

New car sales for the first half of the year (109,960) are 30 per cent ahead of last year.

Light Commercial Vehicles (LCV) were up 49 per cent (3,768) on July 2014 (2,535) and year to date are up 54 per cent (18,426).

Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV) are also up 41 per cent for the month of July (291) compared to the same month last year (207) and overall are up 9 per cent (1,556).

The July figures were announced at the launch of the SIMI/DoneDeal 2ndQuarter Motor Industry Review, which was compiled by Economist Jim Power and provides key Industry information on 2015 up to the end of June.

The Review has highlighted a 25.4 per cent increase in car sales so far in 2015 with the price of a new car down on average of 2.9 per cent.

This increase has seen the Irish Exchequer benefit by €761million from new and used car sales since the start of the year, 3.7 per cent of the total tax taken by the State this year.

The SIMI/DoneDeal Review also highlighted the key contribution of the Motor Industry in relation to job creation with 13.6 per cent of all new jobs in Ireland in the past 12 months being created across the Motor Industry.  5,600 new jobs have been created in the Industry since June 2014.