According to data from the Bank of Ireland, September expenditure declined last month, continuing a pattern that began in 2021 and 2022 when monthly declines of between 6 and 8 percent were seen.

The amount of Irish card spending in France, however, defied the general trend as thousands of Irish supporters flocked to the Rugby World Cup.

France was the only country to demonstrate improvement over August's numbers, with card spending up by 9%.

Meanwhile, significant drops in expenditure were observed in other popular holiday locations for Irish travellers, such as Greece (down 23%), Portugal (down 18%) and Spain (down 13%).

Domestically, September saw a sharp reduction in social expenditure of 14% and a 7% decline in retail spending.

Even though a lot of rugby fans went to see Ireland's World Cup matches, overall pub expenditure decreased by 19%, while fast-food and restaurant spending decreased by 17% and 14%, respectively.

Separate statistics from the Banking and Payments Federation (BPFI) revealed that, despite a dismal September, the amount of online and mobile banking transactions increased by 4% in the first half of the year to the highest level since the data series' inception in 2016.

In the first half of 2023, the total number of these transactions was 73.1 million. Meanwhile, the number of checks written was down 12.1% year over year to 7.5 million transactions between January and June of 2023.

The BPFI also pointed out that the Central Bank's statistics for the second quarter of this year showed that card transactions amounted to €22.7 billion, with the majority of that amount coming from spending on groceries and dining out.