1 in every 7 city commercial units are empty

Bleak figures released this week show that more than one in every seven commercial premises in Galway City was empty at the beginning of this year.

Of the 3,123 commercial addresses in the city, 531 (17%) are empty – that rate is up around 0.5% since the middle of last year.

The stark figures are compounded by the fact that Connacht has the three counties with the three highest rates of commercial vacancies in the country – Sligo, Leitrim and Galway.

But a breakdown of towns in the county shows that more than one-fifth of units in Tuam are empty.

According to a new report from GeoDirectory and DKM Economic Consultants, the total number of commercial address points in Galway at the end of March this year was 9,923.

The report uses an address point as a unit, as opposed to a building, which can comprise one or more units.  Of these, a startling 1,528 (15.4%) are empty across the city and county.

In Loughrea, there are 306 address points, of which 18.4% (56) are empty, while the highest rate found in the survey was in Tuam at 20.2% (99 of the 489 addresses).

For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune