One-in-five houses are empty, says report

AS many as one-in-five houses in Ireland could be empty, almost three times the European average, new research suggests.

A report commissioned by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) has detailed the wide disparities between four recent reports on the level of vacant houses in the country.

These reports show that of the roughly 1.9 million houses in the state, the number of empty houses may be anything from 301,682 to 352,414 — a 17% divergence as to what the actual figure may be.