Strike 3 / Commercial Dereliction
The OPW Ghost Offices
The housing tracker asks why habitable homes sit idle. The office pivot asks the inverse question:
how much public money is locked into Dublin office space that OPW records, audits, or occupancy
surveys show as unoccupied, reserved, delayed, or materially underused?
EUR 122m
OPW operating lease expenditure for office accommodation in 2024.
EUR 1bn
Estimated end-2024 commitments on office accommodation leases.
45%
Average desk occupancy in 47 Dublin city-centre office surveys.
EUR 19.9m
Known rent paid on two unoccupied Dublin office cases cited by C&AG.
Anchor Cases
Reserved / unoccupied
Distillers Building, Dublin 7
Known spend: EUR 12.0m rent paid, excluding VAT, from the end of the rent-free period in March 2024 to September 2025.
Status: Classified in the OPW database as reserved, meaning allocated but currently unoccupied.
Delayed occupation
Bishop's Square, Dublin 2
Known spend: Almost EUR 7.9m rent paid, excluding VAT, from May 2019 to March 2024 while the space was not occupied.
Status: The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade moved in during May 2024 after fit-out delays.
High-rent lead
Miesian Plaza, Dublin 2
Known spend: EUR 10.9m in 2024 lease expenditure, the highest office-lease figure cited by C&AG.
Caveat: The cited report does not identify this building as empty; it belongs in the lease-cost cross-check, not the ghost-office total.
Owned vacancy lead
Trinity Point, Dublin 2
Known spend: Purchased for EUR 39.85m, excluding VAT, in December 2023.
Status: The first floor remained vacant during a May 2025 site visit, with OPW later saying it had been allocated to a client.
FOI / Data Pipeline
- Request OPW Tririga lease exports: address, landlord/payee, annual rent, lease start, term, rent-free periods, break clauses, current client, and status.
- Request annual desk-occupancy returns and survey results by building, including survey dates and workstation counts.
- Cross-reference addresses against the PSRA Commercial Leases Register for lease rent, term, review, rent-free, fit-out, and break-clause details.
- Use CRO/company checks to map landlord entities and recurring corporate owners behind State office leases.
Working claim: known C&AG cases already show about EUR 20m paid on unoccupied Dublin office space.
The larger "tens of millions" number should wait for building-level OPW occupancy and lease records.
Sources