Daa said that in March, 2.9 million passengers passed through the nation's two busiest airports Dublin Airport handled 2,622,237 million passengers, while Cork handled 226,250 passengers.

Cork operated 1,552 flights last month, compared to 19,310 at Dublin Airport.

In less than 20 minutes, 95% of travellers cleared security at Dublin Airport, whilst all travellers cleared security at Cork Airport in the same amount of time, according to daa.

As Easter weekend got underway, Friday, March 29, was the busiest day of the month for both airports.

According to today's statistics, London Heathrow was the most frequently visited location from both airports in the previous month.

The Six Nations match against Scotland and the football matches against Switzerland and Belgium, among other high-profile sporting events, contributed to Dublin Airport's record number of passengers last month, according to Kenny Jacobs, chief executive of daa.

He said that a large number of spectators and bettors took flights to attend the Cheltenham Racing Festival and the Ireland vs. England rugby match at Twickenham.

Mr. Jacobs mentioned that Cork Airport just launched a very full summer schedule, which included the launch of a new Ryanair route to Brussels last weekend.

“Other new Ryanair services to Rhodes and Zadar will take off in June and Air France will add additional capacity on their key hub connections to Paris Charles de Gaulle for July and August,” said Jacobs.