The IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the managed registry for Ireland’s official internet address .ie released the figures today showing the total number of .ie domains grew by 12.9% net in 2011 to 173,145.

So if you do work in ranking the web sites in the Google results, that means that there is 12.9% more competition today than a year ago. That is of course presuming that the same percentage of the domains have been displaying a web sites a year ago and today. And there is nothing suggesting otherwise.

.ie domain space is growing, regardless of the economy shrinking in the last year. That means your SEO budget will have to be bigger for the next year to achieve the same results you have done with it the last year.