Last updated: September 2026. Human written and fact checked against each named source.
Dublin’s commercial property market is at a turning point that the headline numbers alone do not explain. Commercial vacancy nationally fell for the first time since records began in 2013, office letting activity is running well above its five year average, and yet the Central Bank still expects the office vacancy rate to rise above 19% this year. This page collects the current figures on commercial and office property in Dublin and across Ireland: how much space is empty, where it is empty, what occupies it, how the buildings perform on energy, and how much new commercial work is being permitted. Every number links to the GeoDirectory, Central Bank, CSO or agency release it came from.
Key Dublin Commercial Property Statistics at a Glance
- The commercial vacancy rate in Dublin was 13.3% in the second quarter of 2026, down 0.6 percentage points in a year and below the national rate of 14.5%. Source: GeoDirectory Commercial Vacancy Rates Report, Q2 2026
- 30,611 commercial properties were vacant nationally, and the national rate fell year on year for the first time since reporting began in 2013. Source: GeoDirectory and EY, Q2 2026
- Within Dublin, commercial vacancy ranges from 17.6% in Dublin 8 to 6.7% in Dublin 15, and 17 of the 22 postal districts are at or below the national rate. Source: GeoDirectory, Q2 2026
- Dublin office take-up reached 1 million square feet in the first half of 2026, 22% above the five year first half average. Source: JLL, Dublin Office Market Dynamics, Q2 2026
- The Central Bank’s central scenario is that Dublin office vacancy rises to just over 19% in 2026 before falling back below the end of 2024 level of 18.6% by the end of 2027. Source: Central Bank of Ireland, Staff Insights, November 2025
- Only 19.6% of offices given a Building Energy Rating in 2026 are rated A or B, while 23.7% are rated E, F or G (calculated). Source: CSO Non-Domestic Building Energy Ratings, table NDBER01
- 851,600 people were employed in the Dublin region in the second quarter of 2026, and 334,600 of them, 39.3%, worked in the office-based sectors of information and communication, finance and real estate, professional services, administration and public administration (calculated). Source: CSO Labour Force Survey, table QLF07
- 1,464 planning permissions for commercial buildings were granted nationally in the year to the second quarter of 2026, 389 of them in Dublin, and 51.0% of all commercial permissions were for alterations rather than new build (calculated). Source: CSO Planning Permissions, table BHQ13
- Permissions granted in that year covered 660,000 square metres of commercial floor area nationally, 231,000 square metres of it in Dublin, a 35.0% share (calculated). Source: CSO, table BHQ14
- The volume of non-residential building output fell 18.0% in the year to the second quarter of 2026 (calculated). Source: CSO Production in Building and Construction, table BEQ05
How Much Commercial Space Stands Empty
GeoDirectory, which maintains the national database of Irish buildings with An Post, counted 30,611 vacant commercial properties in the second quarter of 2026. The national commercial vacancy rate was 14.5%, down 0.1 percentage points year on year, and that small movement is the first annual decline since GeoDirectory began reporting the measure in 2013 (GeoDirectory Commercial Vacancy Rates Report, prepared by EY, Q2 2026).
The national average hides a widening east to west split. Donegal had the highest county rate at 20.7%, followed by Sligo at 20.2%, Galway at 18.6%, and Leitrim and Limerick at 18.1% each. Meath had the lowest at 9.9%, the only county below 10%, ahead of Wexford at 11.2% and Westmeath at 12.0%. Vacancy rose in 13 of the 26 counties and fell in 12 (same source).
Dublin sits comfortably below the national figure at 13.3%, and its rate improved by 0.6 percentage points over the year. For a decorating contractor the vacancy figure is a work pipeline as much as a market indicator, because a unit that changes hands or is re-let is almost always repainted before the new occupier moves in.
Vacancy Across Dublin’s Postal Districts
The district detail shows how uneven the capital is. These are the extremes reported for the second quarter of 2026 (GeoDirectory, Q2 2026):
| Dublin postal district | Commercial vacancy rate |
|---|---|
| Dublin 8 (highest) | 17.6% |
| Dublin 9 | 16.8% |
| Dublin 3 | 16.5% |
| Dublin 2 (biggest improvement, down 4.3 points) | 14.1% |
| Dublin 20 | 8.8% |
| Dublin 16 | 8.3% |
| Dublin 15 (lowest) | 6.7% |
Dublin 2, the traditional office core, recorded the sharpest improvement of any district in the capital, with vacancy down 4.3 percentage points in a year. The inner suburbs to the north and west of the city carry the highest rates.
The Office Market in 2026
Office letting has picked up. Property consultancy JLL reported Dublin office take-up of 1 million square feet in the first half of 2026, 22% above the five year first half average, with demand broadening beyond technology into banking, professional services and flexible workspace. JLL put total office vacancy at 12.2% at the end of the second quarter, a fifth consecutive quarterly fall from a peak of 15.9% in the first quarter of 2025, with Dublin 2 vacancy at about 9.8% and reserved stock up 19% over the quarter to around 976,000 square feet (JLL, Dublin Office Market Dynamics, Q2 2026).
Those agency figures are contested. The Central Bank of Ireland, using scheduled lease expiries from the commercial leases register, published a framework in November 2025 whose central scenario has Dublin office vacancy rising to just over 19% in 2026 before easing back below the end of 2024 level of 18.6% by the end of 2027. Its benign scenario suggests vacancy may already have peaked, while its adverse scenario returns the market to levels last seen around the 2009 property collapse (Central Bank of Ireland, Staff Insights Vol. 2025 No. 9). Data provider MSCI, reported by the Irish Times, recorded vacancy on its institutionally owned portfolio of central Dublin offices rising from 13.1% to 17.3% during 2025 (Irish Times, March 2026).
The honest summary is that measured vacancy depends on which stock is counted. Agency figures track the modern lettable market, the Central Bank models the whole office stock including space tied up in expiring leases, and GeoDirectory counts every commercial address in the country. All three matter to anyone pricing refurbishment work, because the gap between them is mostly older, poorer quality space that needs investment before it can be let.
What Occupies Dublin’s Commercial Space
Nationally, 179,998 commercial units were occupied in the second quarter of 2026, of which 151,993 carried an economic activity code. Services held the dominant share at 49.5%, or 75,305 units, retail and wholesale came second at 21.7%, or 33,013 units, and health accounted for 9.6%, or 14,652 units. Accommodation and food services alone accounted for 22,042 units, down 439 on the year (GeoDirectory, Q2 2026).
Dublin is where the office-based economy sits. The Labour Force Survey recorded 851,600 people in employment in the Dublin region in the second quarter of 2026, up 1.1% on the year. Information and communication employed 101,200, professional, scientific and technical activities 76,500, financial, insurance and real estate activities 74,600, public administration 47,300 and administrative and support services 35,000. Those five office-based sectors together employ 334,600 people, or 39.3% of everyone at work in the region, and information and communication alone grew 7.8% in the year (all calculated from CSO table QLF07).
The business base is similarly concentrated. Dublin had 136,809 active enterprises in 2023, 34.1% of the national total of 401,359, employing 1,105,834 people (CSO Business Demography, table BRA30; share calculated).
Hospitality is the largest single group within those services units, with 22,042 commercial premises occupied by accommodation and food businesses; the sector’s visitors, jobs, prices and refurbishment activity are set out in our hospitality statistics for Ireland.
Energy Ratings of Irish Commercial Buildings
Non-domestic Building Energy Ratings show how much of the commercial stock needs work. Of the 3,048 non-domestic BERs published in 2026 to the end of the second quarter, 776 were for offices. Just 25 of those offices achieved an A rating and 127 a B, so 19.6% reached A or B, while 191 were rated C, 103 D, and 184, or 23.7%, were rated E, F or G (calculated from CSO table NDBER01).
Office ratings are being published in growing numbers, rising from 1,349 in 2024 to 1,462 in 2025, an increase of 8.4% (calculated). County Dublin accounted for 297 non-domestic ratings in 2026 to date, of which 23.2% were A or B and 19.9% E, F or G. The spread within the city is wide: in Dublin 15, 39.0% of rated non-domestic buildings are A or B, while in Dublin 12, 39.6% are E, F or G (all calculated from CSO table NDBER03). Poorly rated older offices are precisely the buildings that need refurbishment to compete for tenants, and refurbishment ends in decorating.
Retail premises sit close to that average: of the 1,617 shops given a non-domestic energy rating in 2025, 31.4% reached A or B and 22.6% were rated E, F or G (calculated); our retail statistics for Ireland cover shop sales, vacancy and fit-outs.
Commercial Building and Fit-Out Activity
Planning data shows where the commercial work is. In the year to the second quarter of 2026, 1,464 planning permissions were granted for commercial buildings nationally, 389 of them in Dublin, a 26.6% share. Crucially for the finishing trades, 746 of those permissions, 51.0%, were for alterations and conversions, against 396 for new construction and 322 for extensions (all calculated from CSO table BHQ13). More than half of permitted commercial projects are changes to existing buildings rather than new ones.
By floor area, permissions in that year covered 660,000 square metres of commercial space nationally, of which 231,000 square metres, or 35.0%, were in Dublin (calculated from CSO table BHQ14). Permissions for industrial buildings numbered 565 nationally and for government, health and education buildings 837 over the same period (CSO table BHQ13).
Output, however, is falling. The volume index of non-residential building production stood at 96.8 in the second quarter of 2026 against 118.0 a year earlier, a fall of 18.0%, while residential building stood at 104.6 and civil engineering at 135.1 (calculated from CSO table BEQ05). New commercial construction is slowing while refurbishment of existing space carries a growing share of the work.
What This Means for Commercial Decorating
Three of these trends point the same way. Alterations account for over half of commercial planning permissions, non-residential new build output is down 18.0% in a year, and almost a quarter of newly rated offices sit at E, F or G. Together they describe a market where the work is refurbishing and re-letting existing buildings rather than filling new ones, and repainting is part of nearly every such project, whether it is a full office fit-out, a landlord preparing vacant space for viewings, or a retail unit changing hands.
The same pattern shows up in the residential figures, where extensions and alterations dominate planning permissions, as set out in our home renovation statistics for Ireland. Energy upgrades are driving much of the refurbishment work in both sectors, covered in our retrofit statistics for Ireland, and the capacity of the trade that carries it out is set out in our painting and decorating trade statistics.
Method and Sources
All figures on this page were checked at source in September 2026. Commercial vacancy rates, vacant unit counts, county and Dublin postal district figures and the occupied unit mix are from the GeoDirectory Commercial Vacancy Rates Report for the second quarter of 2026, prepared by EY and published on 26 August 2026. Office take-up, total office vacancy, Dublin 2 vacancy and reserved stock are from property consultancy JLL’s Dublin Office Market Dynamics for the second quarter of 2026, published 20 July 2026, and are agency research rather than official statistics. The vacancy projections are from the Central Bank of Ireland Staff Insights paper What Next for the Dublin Office Vacancy Rate, Vol. 2025 No. 9, published 14 November 2025. The MSCI portfolio figures are reported by the Irish Times, March 2026, and are cited as secondary. Non-domestic Building Energy Ratings are from CSO tables NDBER01 and NDBER03, updated 26 August 2026, and count ratings published in each year rather than the whole building stock. Employment is from CSO table QLF07 for the second quarter of 2026, enterprise counts from CSO table BRA30 for 2023, planning permissions from CSO tables BHQ13 and BHQ14 for the year to the second quarter of 2026, and construction output from CSO table BEQ05. Where a share or change is described as calculated, it was derived by OS Decor from the named source and the working is available on request. The page will be refreshed after each quarterly GeoDirectory report, each quarterly CSO planning and construction release, and the Central Bank’s next assessment.
How OS Decor Helps
OS Decor paints and finishes commercial property across Dublin, from office fit-outs and landlord refurbishments to retail units, hotels and industrial buildings, working outside business hours where a building is occupied. If you are preparing space to let or refreshing offices your teams have come back to, our office painting Dublin team can quote from a walkthrough, our commercial painting and industrial painting services cover larger projects, and you can contact us for a written quote with a fixed completion date.
