Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The GeoDirectory database for quarter 2 2024 classifies 82,031 dwellings as vacant on a national vacancy rate of 3.9%. This remains a record low. The report showed that vacancy rates had decreased in 19 counties.

The database published worrying figures for commercial vacancy. There are crisis levels of vacancy in many towns and villages across the country. In County Sligo, it is 20.5%; County Donegal, 19.4%; County Galway, 18.5%; County Limerick, 17.5%; and County Leitrim 17.5%. This is of real concern and this is something that local authorities, collectively with town teams, need to get a handle on, along with the town centre first officers that have been put in place, as well as vacancy officers. That is a hugely important piece of work that needs to be addressed. If that requires using a bit of creativity around bring commercial premises back into full occupancy and looking at returning shops to full occupancy, issues like that should be given consideration. We see pilots but that needs to be ramped up. We are seeing huge changes across retail and these are the resulting figures.

Separately, on the rural vacant properties, we will get back to the Deputy on that. I do not have the data relating to the top-up grant but as I said, the 730 grants have been paid out and we anticipate a very significant level of drawdown. The heritage side of our Department has put an additional grant in place with regard to conservation advice, particularly for older, traditional buildings.

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