New figures from the Central Statistics Office show that there was 70,149 vacant dwellings in Ireland in the final quarter of 2024.
This was 2,105 fewer vacant dwellings than the year before and gave an estimated national vacancy rate of 3.2%.
If the electricity used in a dwelling is less than the amount needed to power a medium-sized fridge every day for a year, then CSO considers the dwelling to be vacant for this data set.
Since a normal fridge uses around 2kWh of electricity per day, dwellings are counted as vacant by CSO when consumption falls below 180 kWh per quarter, for four quarters in a row.
The vacancy rate was more than twice as high in rural areas, where it was 5.4% of all houses, than in urban areas, where it was 2.2%.
Vacancy rates were lower in Dublin, Kildare and the surrounding areas, and in the other cities including Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.
The local authority with the highest vacancy rate was Leitrim at 7.8%.
The south Dublin local authority area had the lowest vacancy rate at 0.9%.
At local authority area level, Co Cork had the highest number of vacant dwellings at 6,632.
Dublin city area was next highest with 5,670, followed by Donegal with 5,603.
The lowest numbers were in Carlow (653), Galway City (658), and Laois (963).
The Local Electoral Area (LEA) with the highest vacancy rate was Adare-Rathkeale in Limerick at 9.9%, while the LEA with the lowest vacancy rate was Palmerstown-Fonthill in Dublin at 0.7%.
The figures also show that one-third of vacant dwellings in Ireland had a Building Energy Rating (BER) rating of F or G where a match could be made to a BER assessment.
