This article is from page 1 of the 2011-07-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 1 JPG
A TOTAL of 11,892 dwellings in Clare are currently not being lived in, a figure which equates to over a fifth of the entire housing stock in the county.
The figure was made public with the release of prelimenary Census 2011 findings which recorded the number of vacant residences, while at the same time revealing a rise in the population of the county by some 5.5 per cent.
There are now 116,885 people living in the county, only the second time in 110 years that the county’s population has broken the 110,000 barrier.
The Census figures reveal that the number of new housing stock in Clare increased by 14 per cent in between the 2006 and 2011 censuses, which means that Clare house builds ran ahead of the national average of 13.3 per cent.
However, the breakdown of these figures have also revealed that this in housing numbers has contributed to a sharper increase in the number of vacant dwellings around the county.
The vacancy rate in Clare is now running at nearly 22 per cent, eight points higher than the national average of 14.7 per cent, with the western seaboard being the worst part of the county affected.
A map of the county produced by the CSO shows that vacancy rates in west and north Clare are now running at over 25 per cent, startling figures that back up claims made to The Clare People by a number of Census enumerators from their experiences on the ground back in April.
Only seven other counties have higher rates of vacant housing than Clare, the reason being traced back to the building boom that saw a proliferation of holiday homes during the Celtic Tiger years and the special seaside resort status given to Kilkee and Lahinch by the Rainbow Coalition in the 1990s.