Waste of space: empty IDA factories to cost taxpayers millions in rent bill

FOLLOWING this year’s electronic voting debacle, more than 7,000 voting machines are gathering dust, many in specially rented warehouses throughout the country.

Yet 87 IDA industrial units and factories - many of which would make fine warehouses - are lying idle.

Thanks to a combination of an ambitious IDA property campaign in the 1980s and the traditional lack of joined-up thinking associated with Government bureaucracies, more than 30 of these factories are still being rented at a cost of millions each year despite remaining empty.