One in seven commercial units are vacant in Galway

Bleak statistics published this week show an average of one in every seven commercial premises in Galway were lying empty last month.

And the rate was even higher for the likes of Tuam and Loughrea where around one in five units were empty.

Galway as a whole has the third highest level of empty commercial units in the entire country, at 15.3%, on a par with Limerick.

And the top two worst performing counties are also in Connacht – Sligo (16.8%) and Leitrim (16.3%), while the national average was 13.1%.

According to the report from GeoDirectory and DKM Economic Consultants, the total number of commercial addresses in Galway was 13,598 in June – of these, 9,702 were in the county; 3,105 in the city; 297 in Loughrea and 494 in Tuam.

The report uses an address point as a unit, as opposed to a building, which can comprise one or more units.  The vacancy rates are: County Galway (15.3%); Galway City (15.9%); Loughrea (19.7%) and Tuam (20.2%).

A breakdown of the sectors for which the address points are used shows 48.1% are general services; 22.4% distribution; 10.9% health and social; 4.1% construction; 5.1% construction; 5.3% education and 2.4% financial.

Dara Keogh, CEO of GeoDirectory said: “We’re seeing commercial vacancy rates beginning to creep up again with the average national rate reaching 13.1%. The gap between the east and west of the country has continued to grow in the last 12 months.

“The vacancy rate in Leinster, excluding Dublin has come down 0.4% to 12% while the rate in Connacht has gone up 0.3% to 15.2%.

“The five counties in Connacht all featured in the top seven highest vacancy rates in Ireland,” said Mr Keogh.

The GeoDirectory figures are recorded by 5,600 An Post delivery staff working with experts from Ordnance Survey Ireland. The database is used by many different companies and organisations across a diverse range of applications.  The emergency services use it for route optimisation when responding to 999 calls, which can save valuable minutes in an emergency, while it is also used by the likes of the Central Statistics Office, the Property Registration Authority, Bord Gais, 11890 directory enquiries, banks, property websites and pizza delivery companies.