IDA ‘working’ on finding tenant for Dublin Road site, Carlow
The vacant IDA building on Carlow's Dublin Road
THE IDA is ‘actively working’ on finding a suitable tenant for the advanced building solutions site on the Dublin Road, according to Carlow Co Council’s chief executive Coilín O’Reilly.
Mr O’Reilly was replying to a question at the March county council meeting from cllr John Cassin of Independent Ireland, who asked whether there was any update on securing a tenant for the building, which has been lying empty since construction finished in 2022.
“I met our IDA representative this morning and they confirmed that they did have a site visit to the centre earlier in the year, so they are actively working on it,” Mr O’Reilly said. However, he stressed that a site visit does not guarantee a company will take up tenancy.
“I did note some commentary lately where the IDA announced the list of all the counties that they had hosted visits to, and I thought we were actually quite high up on this list, which was good for us and the people working on our behalf,” he added.
Mr O’Reilly was referencing recent statistics released by the minister for enterprise, tourism and employment Peter Burke in a written Dáil reply to Waterford TD David Cullinane, who had asked for a breakdown on the number of international IDA visits to different counties over the past ten years. These statistics showed that, over the last decade, there had been 60 IDA-facilitated site visits to Carlow.
In 2025, there were seven visits, with six in 2024, five in 2023 and three in 2022.
Since 2022, when the Dublin Road building was completed, Carlow has ranked 11th out of 26 counties for facilitated site visits.
The figures included visits by multinational companies, where that company is considering new or expansionary investment activities in Ireland. The figures represent individual site visits and it should be noted that potential clients may visit more than one county and return to a location more than once.
In his response, minister Burke said that regional development is a key focus of the current programme for government and that, in 2025, the IDA had secured 323 investments, 183 of which were in regional locations. “I must also stress that, ultimately, individual investors decide which counties to visit and where to locate their investments,” he added.
A spokesperson from IDA Ireland told that a key component of the new ‘Adapt Intelligently 2025-2029’ strategy is the “continued and ambitious focus on maximising regional investment opportunities for all regions, including the south-east, in the years ahead through the delivery of agile, sustainable, flexible property solutions providing certainty to IDA and Enterprise Ireland clients in advance of demand.
“The availability of quality business parks and strategic sites is a critical component of the regional value proposition and ensures that the region has a competitive, sustainable property offering to enable the attraction and retention of investment and jobs.”
