State body to pay €2m rent for unused offices

Galway and Roscommon Education and Training Board (GRETB) will have to be pay annual rent of over €88,000 for the next 12 years for city office space it no longer uses.
The former County Galway VEC has already shelled out almost €900,000 in the past decade for the office at the Hynes Building on Augustine Street, even though it didn’t use it. GRETB is locked into a lease that only expires in March 2027, and the lease does not have a break clause.
The cumulative spend on rent by GRETB – and by extension the taxpayer – will be more than €1.9 million by the time the lease expires.
The waste of money was revealed in correspondence between the Department of Education and Public Accounts Committee.
The PAC letter shows that the GRETB is paying annual rent of €88,055 on the property, meaning it will spend over €1.9m in rent from the time it ceased using the building in 2004 until the lease expires in 2027. It is, however, recouping some €25,186 a year by subletting some of its office space.
In a statement, GRETB said the expenditure “is an issue of ongoing concern” to its executive and board. Derek Nolan, Galway West Labour TD, who is on the Public Accounts Committee, said it would be a “shocking waste of money”.
“If the figure of almost €2 million is correct, that is shocking and totally unacceptable. At a time when the education system is in dire need of investment, we cannot have a situation where a public body is forking out €88,000 a year in rent for offices that are lying idle. It must look at using ‘get out’ clauses on other buildings it rents and move back to the Hynes Building to save on rents elsewhere,” Deputy Nolan said.
For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.