The figures show that the Irish Daily Mail's sales rose by 8.38% from 58,335 copies a day to 63,225 copies a day during the 12-month period to last July.

They also reveal that when the Irish Times's bulk sales, copies of the paper given out for free, are removed from its data, its circulation has actually fallen from 114,248 to 112,248 over the past year.

The circulation of the Irish Independent, which is owned by Independent News & Media, which owns 29.9% of this newspaper, also fell during the year when bulks are excluded, from 143,141 copies to 141,754.

The Daily Mail's data was released separately to the figures for most other Irish papers due to the fact that it is an edition of a British title.

A spokeswoman for the paper's owners, Associated Newspapers, said executives were pleased with the paper's performance, which has consistently exceeded its original 40,000 copies a day sales target.

"We are confident that we will continued to improve on this and very excited about our future plans, " she said.

However, Irish media buyers believe the title has had little impact on the sales of Associated's main target, the Irish Independent.

"I think that the Daily Mail are really expanding the market because they have a lot of Irish content but they aren't taking readers from existing titles, " said Karen Conway, a media planner with Precision Media.

She said that the figures also confirmed that the Dublin freesheets, Metro and Herald AM, were having little impact on paid-for newspaper sales, although it appeared that they may have been a factor in the 5.5% sales drop experienced by the Evening Herald.

"I think though that the freesheets are adding to the market and are allowing advertisers to target young professionals who wouldn't otherwise buy a paper."

Elsewhere in the market, there were few significant circulation changes apart from the Irish Examiner, where sales dropped by 2.4% to 57,217 copies per day, the Sunday Wo r ld which experienced a 3.1% sales increase and the Sunday Tribune, which experienced a 2.8% drop in sales from 72,184 copies to 70,192 copies.

However, these raw figures do not factor in the paper's decision to discontinue its international edition, which accounted for around 2,000 sales, last year.