Cork has highest number of vacant homes in the country, with more than 8,500 lying empty

CSO said an estimated 70,149 homes in Ireland were vacant over the 12-month period to the end of 2024, with Cork having almost one in every eight vacant dwellings across the country

While 29,268 homes were brought of out of vacancy in 2024, a further 27,163 homes became idle. File picture: Larry Cummins

Cork county has the highest number of homes lying vacant across any local authority in the country, the latest figures show, with more than 8,500 empty homes across Cork as a whole.

The Central Statistics Office said an estimated 70,149 homes in Ireland were vacant over the 12-month period to the end of 2024, with Cork having almost one in every eight vacant dwellings across the country.

It comes amid calls for local authorities to have expanded teams to deal with the large number of applications for vacant home grants in both rural and urban areas.

“The estimated vacancy rate in Ireland for dwellings based on metered electricity consumption was 3.2% in Q4 2024,” CSO statistician Steven Conroy said.

The figures show while progress was being made to reduce the number of vacant homes, an almost equal number are become vacant at the same time. While 29,268 homes were brought of out of vacancy in 2024, a further 27,163 homes became idle.

Higher levels of vacancy are more common in the western half of the country, with Leitrim, Donegal and Mayo having the highest rates, ranging from 7.8% to 6%.

Across 2024, the number of idle homes increased in Cork City, Cork County, Donegal, Dublin City, Galway City and Waterford.

The CSO data goes into a very granular level, including both local electoral area and electoral division.

By local electoral area, Adare-Rathkeale in Limerick had the highest vacancy rate, with one in every 10 homes vacant (9.9%).

Drilling down into a more localised electoral division, the highest vacancy rate was in An Ghrafaidh in Donegal at 21.3%, followed by Glenfarn (18.1%) and Cloverhill (16.3%) in Leitrim.

Government grants are available for those wishing to renovate vacant or derelict properties to bring them back into use, up to a maximum of €70,000.

To the end of 2025, more than 16,000 applications had been made across the country since the grant’s introduction in July 2022. Over 4,500 such grants have been paid, with €246m issued.

It recently emerged Cork County Council had to draft in extra staff to help deal with the volume of applications.

As of November, 870 applications had been approved but not paid out until the works are completed and they are signed off by county council staff.

Council officials reported to a meeting of the local authority’s Northern Division the scheme has had such an uptake, it has reassigned resources from other departments to "expedite the processing of applications and to clear a processing backlog".

And, last week, it emerged three family homes in Glanmire have been vacant for two decades, with neither Cork City Council nor Cork County Council taking responsibility for them.

Earlier this month, former Government minister Eamon Ryan — who now chairs the European Housing Advisory Board — called for each local authority to have a vacant homes team to speed through applications.

“Every council now has a vacant homes officer, but I think that needs to be a team rather than an individual,” he said. 

“And we need to work with people who have such properties to bring them through the complicated administrative process, their design and building process, and the grant process.”