About four in 10 properties owned by development agency IDA Ireland are idle, it emerged yesterday.
Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment figures show that 62 of the 150 buildings and industrial units owned by the IDA are vacant.
The level of vacancy, 41 per cent, is down from the 43 per cent recorded at the end of 2006, but is one of the highest recorded over the last decade.
The lowest level of vacancy recorded by the IDA was 23 out of a total of 305, just less than 8 per cent, in 2000, at the height of the economic boom.
Since 2004, about 40 per cent of the agency's properties have been vacant. The highest in percentage terms was 2005, when 87 out of 189 properties, 46 per cent, were vacant.
In 1998, 113 of the IDA's buildings were vacant but, at that time, it owned more than 600 properties.
The number of properties owned by the agency has fallen as it has sold off many to multi-nationals which invested in the Republic.
An IDA spokeswoman said yesterday that the agency had to have vacant buildings and industrial units to be able to attract investment.
"We have a very active property portfolio," she said. "We own buildings, we lease them, and we are building industrial and business parks.
"We must have a number of vacant properties because we can't bring people over here and then have nothing to show them," she added.
In late November, US pharmaceuticals giant Merck said it was taking over the 65-acre business park on the Dublin Road in Carlow from the agency.
The €200 million investment will create 170 new jobs in the Republic.
However, Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar issued a statement yesterday demanding that the Government carry out a full survey of vacant IDA properties and land "with a view to making them available for alternative use".
He said this could include handing the properties over to county enterprise boards and local authorities or using them for social and affordable housing or schools.
Mr Varadkar claimed that the agency is leasing 35 of the vacant properties from private landlords.
The spokeswoman confirmed that the IDA leased some properties, and added that this was as a result of deals done in the 1980s.
