Both Carlow and Kilkenny have lower commercial vacancy rates than the national average.
Kilkenny’s decreased to 12.7% in December 2023, while Carlow’s increased to 14.1%
Thats according to the latest GeoDirectory Commercial Buildings Report. The report, prepared by EY, found that both Counties were still lower than the national average of 14.3%.
Of 80 towns across the Country in December 2023, Carlow Town had the highest commercial vacancy rate at 19.2% while Tullow had the lowest at 14.4%
While in Kilkenny Callan had the highest commercial vacancy rate at 18.9% while Kilkenny City had the lowest at 14.1%
Dara Keogh, CEO of GeoDirectory spoke to KCLR News about what they do “So what we do is we look at the commercial vacancy rate across the whole country, then we break it down by county, then we go further into some of the towns in each of the counties”.
“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to see what are people’s experience in their Counties, in their neighbourhood of what’s actually happening in their economy rather than what you hear at national level, which can be sometimes a little bit distance away but what you see in your High Street and where you buy stuff is what you experience” .
“We look at a commercial vacancy rate, as you know, many of the places that you go to have vacancies and that is an indicator of how, good or how strong the area is. So nationally, we’ve seen an increase to our highest level since we start to do this at 14.3% and in Carlow it’s down below that at 14.1% and Kilkenny is even further than that at 12.7%. To put those figures in some context, because you’re kind of hard to understand where you lie when you just hear two figures, so at the upper end we have Sligo and that has a commercial basis rate of 20.5% and at the lower end you have Meath which has just 10.1% vacancy rate. So you can see that Kilkenny is quite good at 12.7 and Carlow is moving towards the national average, which is probably higher than you’d like to be”.
