New CSO figures show 85 per cent of homes are now connected to the internet and 90 per cent of under 30s connect online daily.

The latest Information Society statistics from the Central Statistics Office estimate that 85 per cent of households have access to the internet, up 3 per cent on 2014. Households that don’t have internet access say they don’t need it or in 44 per cent of cases said they didn’t have the skills to use the internet.

Email (84 per cent) was the most common activity carried out on the internet by individuals. The second most common activities selected from the options were social networking (66 per cent) and internet banking (64 per cent).

Irish people are also becoming more reliant on e-commerce to satisfy their needs. The most common types of goods or services being purchased by internet users were clothes or sports goods (31 per cent), travel arrangements (29 per cent), tickets for events (29 per cent) and holiday accommodation (27 per cent).

The CSO figures also reveal that Irish internet users have embraced the cloud as the mainstay for their data storage needs.

44 per cent of internet users stated they used storage space on the internet to store files electronically (documents, pictures, music, video or other files). This was an increase of 9 per cent when compared to 2014 results.

Fixed broadband is the most common the of internet access in household, with 77 per cent of homes using fixed broadband and 38 per cent use mobile broadband.

Of the 16-29 age category, 90 per cent accessed the internet every day, compared with just 29 per cent of the 60-74 age category.

76 per cent of individuals in the Dublin region accessed the internet every day, compared with 59 per cent of individuals in the west region.

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