The Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS) is the national association representing amateur radio in Ireland.
They have just released their membership stats for the end of 2018 and it stands at 919 members, a drop of 8. To put that in context, that's a drop of 0.9% so it's pretty much negligible.
That figure of 919 includes overseas members and short wave listeners so the actual number of EI stations that are members is probably around the 770-780 mark, about the same as last year.
Thanks to the new GDPR regulations introduced in 2018, the data on the total number of radio amateurs in Ireland is not available. However, it is probably much the same as last year.
At the end of 2017, roughly 45% of all EI stations were members of the IRTS. Contrast that to the ARRL in the USA where the figure is below 20%!
