There has been another rise in the number of private cars licensed for the first time. 3,021 were licensed in October - up 6.7% on the same month last year.

While there was a drop of almost 9% in the number of imported cars being licensed.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) says Volkswagen, Ford, BMW and Skoda saw the highest number of cars registered in October.

For the year to the end of October 2014, Volkswagen ranked highest with 10,954 for new private cars. This was followed by Toyota, Ford and Hyundai.

In total, there were 89,915 new private cars licensed in the year to the end of October 2014 - a rise of 29.6% compared to the same period in 2013.

The licensing figures also show the number of new goods vehicles licensed in October was 1,467, up 50.8% from October 2013.

And the total number of all new vehicles licensed during October was 4,979 compared with 4,974 during the same month in 2013 - an increase of 0.1%.